


The Ancient Sea

by bomberqueen17



Series: Meet Death Sitting [5]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood Trauma, F/M, Fantasy Polyamory, Father-Daughter Relationship, Found Family, Gen, Kaer Morhen, Long-distance relationships, M/M, Multi, OT3, Panic Attacks, Pining, Political Intrigue, Polyamory, Pornography, There's just a lot of sex, academic pettiness, mention of fantasy noncon, mix of Netflix and W3 game canon sources, social distancing threesome, tw past self-harming behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:36:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 109,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22894186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: Continuing the story: Ciri arrives at Kaer Morhen.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Eskel/Triss Merigold, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Meet Death Sitting [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639717
Comments: 1306
Kudos: 1543





	1. Wolf Pack

**Author's Note:**

> Special shouts-out to the various fans of the video games and books who have been sending me tidbits about their favorites. I hope the upcoming season 2 lives up to some of these expectations, but in the meantime, here's my fandom-osmosis take, LOL.

Even though Ciri understood why Jaskier had left them, it took her a long time to forgive him, in her heart. Geralt was no use; he wouldn’t admit it but he was moping after the bard too, and they spent most of their days in silence apart from utilitarian discussions. 

Geralt awkwardly asked after her menstrual cramps, and made sure to bring extra rinse water for her every night, and after three days she finally had to tell him it was fine and he didn’t need to do that. 

“Good,” was all he said to that. 

Without Jaskier, she went back to curling up next to him at night to share blankets, the way she’d done in the first days with him. She’d thought it would be awkward, but he was a comforting bulk and it was no different really than having to share a horse. So she spent most of her nights and days pressed up to his body in various ways, and it wasn’t awkward the way it sometimes had been with her guardsmen. 

She wasn’t a fool, she knew about sex, and while most of what Jaskier had told her hadn’t been anything she really knew, she’d understood the outlines of it. And if one considered it in the abstract, well, she was a woman, and Geralt was at least nominally a man, and she wasn’t a fool, she knew he had sexual appetites-- she wasn’t entirely sure but she thought that kiss he’d given Jaskier at their parting had been not in any way brotherly-- but he was extremely not in any way remotely sexual in her direction at all, and it was just a blessed relief. 

He felt like family, and maybe that was Destiny and maybe he was just a decent human who was aware that she was a child, but she was glad of it anyway. It felt like he’d known her for her whole life, like Mousesack. 

Sometimes she woke crying or terrified from awful nightmares, and he was awake, holding her and murmuring to her, and that felt a lot better than crying herself to sleep had during those first awful days alone.

But she missed Jaskier, all out of proportion to how short a time she’d known him, and it made her angry that she missed him, and she didn’t know how to talk about it so she didn’t, she just brooded on it. 

They kept going up, and up, into more remote areas and into the mountains. It was so bitterly cold she gave up on her gloves most of the time, leaving them tucked inside her jacket and instead working her hands under Geralt’s jacket and keeping them pressed to his ribs under his shirt. He didn’t complain, though she did make him shiver a time or two. He didn’t have any gloves, and she didn’t know if he was cold. He never said. 

“Jaskier must be in Oxenfurt by now,” she said, after several days. She hadn’t spoken in hours, neither of them had, and the silence was ringing in her ears with Roach’s steady plodding footsteps. 

“Mm,” Geralt said. “No, it’s farther. He won’t be there yet.”

“How much farther?” she asked.

He was silent a moment, and she felt his ribs move with a deeper breath. He breathed slowly, his heart beat slowly; she was getting used to it, and found it soothing now. “We had about four or five days of travel left when we parted,” he said. “And Oxenfurt was closer to two weeks. So we should arrive tomorrow, and he’ll be on the road six or seven more days.”

“He’ll be cold,” she said, without thinking.

Geralt reached back and patted her leg. “He can stay in inns,” he said. “They’re always happy to see a bard. Even if they don’t give him a room, they’ll often let him sleep in the kitchens or something. He won’t be out on the road like we are.”

“He doesn’t have to hide,” she realized.

“Exactly,” Geralt said. They rode in silence for a while, and eventually Geralt said, “Ciri,” and then stopped.

“What?” she asked, pressing her face into his shoulder. It sounded like he was going to try to say something difficult. She knew the tone.

“If I thought for a moment,” he said, “that you’d be safe, I’d have sent you with Jaskier. His is an easier road and I wish I could give you that.”

“I want to stay with you,” she said stoutly, but she knew he wasn’t wrong. She didn’t entirely understand where they were going but she had some inkling, and whatever it was, it wouldn’t be easy or kind. 

He put his hand on his ribs, over where her hand was under his jacket, and held it there for a moment, clearly deeply moved though she couldn’t see his face. Couldn’t see anything; her eyes were closed, her face pressed into the wool of his jacket, which smelled of him and of smoke and of Roach, and by now she’d begun to think of that smell as _home_. 

“You have to,” he said grimly. “They’ll be hunting you. Hunting us. And I don’t know that I can keep you safe but I know I have the best shot at it of anyone.”

It began to snow, and the wind picked up. Geralt decided that they had to push through; if they stopped for the night, the snow would bury them and they’d freeze to death. Roach was tired, so he got down and walked. He’d dug out the hat they’d made him wear, back when they’d first all met up, but he had no gloves, so he was wearing socks on his hands and a blanket around his shoulders, and Ciri had another blanket wrapped around herself and covering as much of Roach as it would reach, and Roach kept plodding along with her head down and Geralt holding her, as the snow rose around them. 

Ciri began to have trouble staying awake. She tried singing, as Jaskier had taught her-- simple singing exercises, because she was too tired to think of songs. But she was too tired for that, eventually. 

Geralt kept shaking her. “You have to stay awake,” he’d say, and she’d agree, and she’d sit up and focus, and then the next thing she knew, he’d be shaking her awake again.

She could tell he was tired too. At great long length, he led them off the side of the road into a hollow, barely protected from the wind but protected a little, and packed them all as closely together as he could, and then cast a sign she’d never seen before, pushing it outward so that it held the wind and the cold off of them. He was including Roach in it, she realized. 

He sank down next to her and leaned back against the wall, looking dead-white and grim-faced with exhaustion, and said, “Sleep. I’ll hold this as long as I can and then we’ll go on.”

It was such a relief to be out of the cold that Ciri fell asleep almost as soon as he finished speaking.

  
  


Geralt held the _Quen_ sign for as long as he could, and then for a bit longer, and used an _Igni_ at the same time, with his other hand, to make some heat-- to melt some snow in a bucket for Roach, and use it to make a warm mash with the last of their oats. She’d need it. Casting two signs at once, however, was searingly painful and left him shaking.

He needed something, and he just didn’t have any of the endurance-boosting sort of potions he needed. He drank some of the warm water instead, not that it was much good-- the energy to heat it had come out of him, so the energy of the heat going back in wasn’t exactly a net gain. The _Quen_ was draining him too fast, and he’d already been tired. But Ciri would die of the cold, and so would Roach; he couldn’t contract the circle to exclude the horse and still have her in any condition to carry Ciri.

The _Quen_ sign flickered out and died without warning, and Roach snorted as she startled out of her doze, the wind whipping ice crystals into her. Geralt had just enough time to get his shoulder up to shield Ciri, but she woke up rudely as well.

“Sorry,” he gritted out, shaking out his stinging hands. He couldn’t straighten up. He had to stand up. He’d spent too much on that sign. He was near the end of what he could do. And he still had to walk another few miles, in ever-deeper snow. “We have to move on.”

“Mm,” Ciri said, yawning, teeth chattering, and he got her up, got her on Roach, stood there with his knees shaking. 

He was seeing spots, and the cold was slicing right through him; he was dangerously exhausted. But they were almost home. Almost home. 

There was a reason you’d come to Kaer Morhen before the worst of winter settled in, and stay there until spring, and this was that reason. 

But they had no choice, they had to press on. 

Roach had perked up a little, and he was tempted to climb up on her back as well, but it was still too far, he thought; she’d break down before they made it, under his weight and Ciri’s. 

Ciri looked a little better, though, her eyes pointing the same direction at least. “How long was that?” she asked hopefully. “Is it nearly dawn?”

It was certainly not nearly dawn, and the storm was certainly not going to break, and he didn’t know what he’d do if he couldn’t continue. He had to lead them. Well, that was the answer: he just had to continue. So he grunted at her rather than answering, and put one foot in front of the other and let Roach down the path.

He had to stop and think harder than he’d expected he’d have to, when it came time for the secret path’s turning. Had he really not been down here for so long? But he hadn’t; it had been many years now since he’d been home, and while he’d seen other Witchers out on the Path, and knew things at Kaer Morhen were roughly as they’d been all along ever since, well, things, he hadn’t been there himself in at least five years, but probably more. 

“What’s wrong?” Ciri asked, as he hesitated. She had to lean down to be heard.

“Secret path,” he said. “I have to choose the right way, or we won’t get in.”

“Does that mean we’re close?” she asked, managing to summon excitement.

 _Miles yet_ , he thought-- well, but only about two, and-- “Yes,” he said.

He led Roach up over the little ridge of rock that concealed the correct path, having to really pull on her to get her to do it. It struck him with sudden surprise that she’d never been here; a previous Roach had been his mount, last time he’d been back. He often forgot about things like that. 

On the other side, there was a long uncomfortable side slope, and Roach did not want to go down it. He had to brace himself and lead her down, fighting her the whole way, and by the time he got to the bottom, his knees were so shaky he had to stop and lean on her. 

She leaned on him, trembling intermittently. They were in a bad way. If Ciri weren’t here he’d take the chance of stopping, and hope they could survive the rest of the night. But he couldn’t risk it with the girl. They had to keep moving. 

It was a gray, unrelenting slog; the wind was less bad here, but the snow had piled deep, and he had to force his way through. Roach simply couldn’t, so he had to walk ahead and break trail so she could walk in his footsteps. It was punishing, and his legs felt like lead, his heartbeat shaking him like a hammer-blow every time and his lungs full of ice that each breath had to drag, rasping, in and out of his raw throat.

Ciri suddenly gasped, and he looked up sharply. “Who’s that?” she asked.

There was a figure on the trail coming toward them, who’d just rounded the next switchback-- a man in a cloak on a horse. “Fuck,” Geralt muttered. If it wasn’t-- who’d be dumb enough to be out in this? It had to be-- but if someone had-- he didn’t have enough in him to fight anyone. 

“I thought you were dead,” a voice called out. “Geralt, you asshole, what are you doing out in this?”

“Eskel,” Geralt said, and took a step toward him and then his knees gave out.

He hadn’t seen Eskel in approximately forever, and the other Witcher was fresh, so in no time Geralt and Ciri were both on Eskel’s horse and he was leading Roach, who was too tired to be hostile. “This one’s named Roach too, yeah?” Eskel said, voice catching on a rough laugh. 

“What else?” Geralt said, around his chattering teeth.

“So original,” Eskel said. But he frowned, his scars twisting the expression into an even scarier look. “You don’t look good and you don’t sound good.”

Geralt managed to grit his teeth hard enough that they didn’t make a sound. “Been a long ride,” he managed to get out, though his voice was uneven.

“Hm,” Eskel said, and in a moment, he’d cast an effortless _Quen_ big enough to shelter both horses and all of them. 

Ciri gasped as the walls of the keep came into sight. Geralt, behind her since he didn’t have to do much to steer Eskel's horse, tightened his arms around her and said, “Kaer Morhen.”

“You grew up _here_?” she said, and he knew her astonishment wasn’t at the size of it, but rather at the ragged gaps visible in the stonework. 

“A long time ago,” he said. He raised his voice a little, recovered enough to speak, and asked Eskel, “Who’s here?”

Eskel laughed. “The usual crew, as you’d know if you ever bothered to grace us with your company,” he said. “Me, Vesemir, Lambert. Oh, and Coen. Do you know Coen?”

Geralt shook his head, frowning. “Who?”

“Young,” Eskel said. “Gryphon. Coen.”

“Oh,” Geralt said. “Err, it rings a bell.” When Eskel said _young_ he probably meant the kid was ninety. Eskel was like that.

“He’s nice,” Eskel said. “I invited him. You know his people are dead.”

“I didn’t know that,” Geralt said, dismayed, but there was nothing else to say to that.

Sheltered from the wind, it felt like no time had passed until they were passing through the gates. “It was the light from your _quen_ that I saw,” Eskel said. “I’ve set wards, to watch. I came out as soon as I saw that, and good thing too.”

“Good thing,” Geralt echoed quietly, and Eskel gave him a surprised look, probably because he was used to more sarcasm between them. But it was so long since Geralt had been home, and he’d missed Eskel terribly, and wasn’t going to admit it but he wasn’t going to hide it either.

Geralt slid off the horse and only sheer force of will kept his knees from buckling. Ciri slid down after him and he caught her as her knees did buckle, and held her upright until she could stand. 

“I’ll see to the horses,” Eskel said. “You’d best get that mite indoors. We’ve been using the old south hall, mostly-- got the chinks mostly sealed up and the roof is good. Some rooms along there-- I’ll be along and help get your lad sorted.”

Geralt hadn’t introduced her, he realized; the whole greeting with Eskel was fuzzy, but he realized the man just hadn’t asked. “Mm,” he said, pulling himself together.

“I’ll bring the luggage,” Eskel said. “Go, you’re dead on your feet.”

For once Geralt didn’t argue, but set off down the hallway, which was missing roof in places but wasn’t too drifted with snow. The south hall’s heavy wooden door was intact, and he heaved it open and was greeted with a welcome rush of hot air. 

Vesemir stood up from his seat by the fire, and Lambert had to kick his feet sharply upward to recover from where he’d been tipping his chair and nearly overbalanced in surprise. There was a third figure, sitting by the fire, and Geralt didn’t know him on sight but he could tell he was another Witcher. Must be Coen. “Geralt,” Vesemir said. 

Geralt found he couldn’t speak, throat tight with something, so he gently steered Ciri in the door. It gave him a moment to collect himself, and he said, “Master Vesemir.” He swallowed hard. “This is my child of surprise, Cirilla.”

Vesemir came over to him and enfolded him in an embrace, shoulder to shoulder, curling his fingers around the back of Geralt’s head with surprising tenderness. “Geralt, my boy,” he said.

Geralt held onto his old swordmaster for a long moment, surprised at how shaky he felt, what a relief it was, how profound it all seemed. He was so tired, and he’d forgotten how familiar Vesemir smelled, some of his earliest memories-- he held onto the man’s powerful shoulders, no less solid than they’d been eighty-something years ago when Geralt had first come out of the Trials-- and just breathed for a moment. 

“I feared you were dead,” Vesemir murmured, pulling back just enough to look him in the face, hands on his shoulders. “Eskel went out looking for you, you know, and found-- well, we feared the worst.”

“Not that lucky,” Geralt said. Then he remembered that Ciri was probably afraid of these strangers, so he gestured to her and said, “Destiny had other plans, I guess. It went to some trouble to unite the two of us.”

Vesemir turned to look at Ciri, assessing but kind. “Now,” he said. “How interesting. Cirilla, you say? Well, I’m Vesemir.”

“I’m a girl,” Ciri said warily. “If we’re using my real name I don’t want to be dressed like a boy.”

“You don’t have to be, anymore,” Geralt said. “No one can hurt you here.”

“Well,” Lambert said. And he ambled up beside Vesemir, looking like his usual self. 

“Lambert,” Geralt said, a bit forbiddingly. Coen came up next to him, and Geralt recognized him-- smallpox scars under his beard, Gryphon medallion. Geralt nodded cautiously to the Gryphon, then fixed his gaze back onto Lambert. 

Lambert grinned suddenly. “Geralt,” he said, “you’re so easy to wind up.”

“He’s had a hard day,” Ciri said crossly. She was clearly tired, and was resembling her grandmother somewhat alarmingly. 

“I spoke unwisely,” Geralt said wearily. “Ciri’s not really afraid of anyone hurting her. _I’m_ afraid of someone trying to hurt her, and getting shredded for it. But, I suppose, if you’re bored, Lambert, you could be her first kill with her teeth.”

Lambert cracked his knuckles. “I look forward to it,” he said, and extended his hand to Ciri for a formal handshake. “Miss Cirilla, I hope someday you’ll kill me with your teeth, but I’ll try not to provoke you to it before your training’s progressed to that point.”

“Lambert’s got some problems,” Geralt told her, “but mostly we can tolerate him.”

“Come _here_ , you asshole,” Lambert said, and Geralt embraced him. He didn’t hang on as long, but it did feel good. Lambert was a survivor, and he and Geralt understood one another well enough about that. The door creaked open as Eskel came in. Lambert let him go and stepped back and said, “Why are you dressed like an ox in a peasant’s shirt?”

Eskel said, “The state of your luggage is astonishing, Geralt. Not a single scrap of armor.”

“I lost all of it at the Fall of Cintra,” Geralt said. “Lost both swords, all my knives, my armor, half my potions.”

“Thought as much,” Eskel said. “Be right back.” 

“Wait,” Geralt said. “You didn’t meet Ciri. Ciri, this is Eskel. Eskel, this is Cirilla, my surprise child.”

Eskel gave Ciri a bow. “Calanthe’s granddaughter,” he said. “You favor her, child.”

Ciri turned to stare at Geralt. Geralt laughed. “Of course you know,” he said to Eskel. Eskel was always up on the latest gossip about Geralt, somehow, even when they hadn’t seen one another lately. That was old news, though.

“It wasn’t like it didn’t make worthy gossip,” Eskel said. “But I’ve done more research than that. Wait here.”

“ _I_ didn’t know,” Lambert said, watching Eskel leave through one of the smaller doors. 

“Ah,” Vesemir said, “you weren’t here, but have you ears, man? Everyone heard of that. We all had a good laugh at him the winter after, or maybe the one after that? But I guess you weren’t here for that one, Lambert.”

“I knew,” Ciri said. They all looked at her. “I mean,” she said, “I knew I belonged with Geralt. My grandmother never told me but i had a nursemaid who gossipped, and she told me all the stories about the Witcher, and said I’d go with you someday.”

“Hm,” Geralt said. 

Coen finally spoke. “I am Coen, of the School of the Gryphon,” he said. “I was invited to overwinter here.”

“I remember meeting you,” Geralt said, and clasped his arm. Coen simply bowed to Ciri, and she nodded warily at him.

“Come, sit, eat,” Vesemir said. “We’ve got decent provisions this year. Some fairly fresh, too-- Eskel only arrived a week or two ago.”

“Oh,” Geralt said, surprised. Vesemir led them over to the table, and Lambert disappeared through another door. Geralt could smell food, through that door, and surmised that was where they were keeping the kitchen nowadays.

He sat down heavier than he meant to. Ciri crowded close next to him on the bench, and reached for the cup on the table. He grabbed it from her and sniffed it and set it out of her reach. “That stuff’s poison,” he said. It was White Seagull, a dangerous thing to leave lying around-- well, a Witcher keep, he couldn’t blame them for not having known he was going to show up with a human child. But in his day, when he’d been a child here, they’d been more careful about that sort of thing. 

“Ah,” Vesemir said, “I’ll get some-- uhh, well, water’s going to be all we’ve got just now, likely.” He sniffed at various pitchers on various surfaces, and Geralt felt himself get even heavier at how much tidying he was going to wind up doing. But that, he had learned, was part of coming home. Everyone else lived like animals. 

“Why do you have cups of poison sitting around?” Ciri asked, a little crossly. She really needed drink, food, and bed, in very short order. 

Geralt sighed. “Because we have to drink poison for work so much that we like to keep it around to drink for fun too,” he said. 

“Keeps us in practice,” Vesemir said, presenting Ciri with an ornate metal cup full of water. It did smell like it was actually clean and untainted. Probably, all the wooden cups here had been used for various poison things and would forever be unsuitable for Ciri to use. Nobody around here would ever have thought to be careful about things like that.

To be fair, there hadn’t been any reason to be careful in a long, long time. 

Eskel came back into the room holding-- Geralt’s swords, both of them, the steel and the silver, in their sheaths. Geralt started up, astonished. “Where--”

“I went looking for you,” Eskel said grimly. “As Nilfgaard was coming north, I knew you’d go to Cintra, and I feared what that mad Lioness would do to you. I got there too late, and found only ruins and rampaging, but I crept through and looked anyway. I thought even if I only found a corpse, I could take your medallion and be sure we knew to drink to you.”

Geralt had lost swords before, had had to replace all of his gear; very little of it was original. Stuff wore out, got broken, got lost in the heat of things, got stuck in a monster that got away, got left behind in a cache that had to be abandoned. But he’d been really fond of both of those swords, and he’d been feeling at loose ends without them. The steel one, with the brooch on the handle, he’d especially been used to. It had felt childish to mourn a sword, but he was incalculably delighted to have them back. 

“I found all your gear, Geralt, all together, in a guardroom near the gate.” Eskel sat down beside him on the bench, straddling the bench and looking-- upset. He was upset. “It looked like they’d looted your corpse. Every knife, Geralt-- _every_ knife.” He held up a cloth bag, set it on the table, opened the top, and spilled out a collection of daggers, mostly silver-coated but not all. “The ones you hand over when they tell you to disarm, and the ones you never do.” He poked through them and pulled out a little battered steel folding knife, which Geralt always kept inside his waistband, near the skin. The wooden handle had long since worn through and fallen off, and he’d wrapped it in rawhide that had begun to wear away as well. It was a little boy’s knife, _had been_ a little boy’s knife a hundred years ago. No one ever found it in searches. But the Cintran guards had. 

Geralt nodded. There wasn’t much to say. 

“The only reason I wasn’t sure you were dead was that there was no medallion,” Eskel said, “but that’s the kind of thing someone takes as a trophy. But your swords had been put away clean, clean by Witcher standards, and there was no blood on your armor, so. Someone took you by surprise? You hadn’t gone down fighting.”

Geralt shook his head. “I surrendered,” he said. Ciri was going to have to hear it sometime, but he didn’t want her to right now. “I’ll have to tell you the whole story, but-- I was captured and surrendered without fighting, because it seemed best. I was still hoping for a diplomatic solution at that point. But it does mean I had to steal a sword and fight my way out and get all the way back here without much of anything, and with no silver, so I wouldn’t have made it without help.”

Normally he knew Ciri would have been listening sharply enough that he’d have to fend off all sorts of questions later, but she was working her way through the cup of water with determination and focus that told him she was about to fall asleep. Lambert came in then with food, and he sniffed suspiciously at it but it was blessedly human-compatible, and they fell to with an avidity only kept tamed by their exhaustion.

“Of _course_ you have to cook meat through for humans,” Vesemir said, with reassuring indignation in response to a question. “They get worms otherwise.”

“I hadn’t known that was a thing,” Geralt admitted.

“It comes up for Witchers occasionally,” Vesemir said. “If you’ve been off the Path a bit, not drinking potions much, you know you have to be a bit more careful with what you eat. Some of us instructors had to make up decoctions once in a while, just for that. Though mostly we were just more careful in the kitchen, what with all the younglings about.” 

He sighed deeply, weary and weighed-down with old grief in a way Geralt understood all too well. Vesemir was the only survivor of the pogrom, because he’d been cut down first and then all his younglings had swarmed to defend his body, and had wound up hiding him under a pile of their corpses. All the other instructors, all the other children-- The worst of many bad stories, perhaps, and Geralt’s hand shook as he remembered that homecoming to Kaer Morhen, smelling the smoke from miles away, and catching up to Eskel, who’d smelled it too and hadn’t been able to go on. They’d come in together, then, and found-- 

Well. He took a breath, let it out, and picked up the cup of White Seagull he’d set aside. It tasted only of burning as he quaffed it at a single go, but it meant he’d sleep.


	2. Insight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hm, TWs: there's a lot of semi-indirect addressing of how fucking traumatic it is to become a Witcher, so general warnings for discussion of childhood trauma including a memory of child death that's not explicit but is vivid. 
> 
> On a more entertaining note, see if you can spot why I felt like I had to post [Warmth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22922326) before I posted this chapter, eh?

Ciri slept straight through the night in Geralt’s bed, wearing a fresh one of his old shirts. He had thought to put her in her own bed-- Eskel helped him set one up for her in her own little room next to his, but he’d let her lie down in his bed in the meantime, and she was out by the time he was done sorting through blankets and all his old clothes that he was relieved to find were still safely stored here, and not at all moth-eaten or mouse-chewed-- and finding a brazier that wasn’t too burnt-out at the bottom so she could have some heat, and-- at any rate, she was so cozy, he’d just given up and gotten into the bed with her.

She woke only briefly in the morning to go relieve herself, drink some water, and then came and slung herself back into the bed. Geralt got up and left her there, reassured by the way she grumbled at him. She was fine, he wouldn’t go far.

Vesemir was in the kitchen when he came in, the glitter of an _Igni_ still dispelling from where he’d lit the cookfire. “Up so early,” he said.

“Eh,” Geralt said. It wasn’t that early. 

“Kid sleep okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Geralt said. He went to the basin next to the standpipe and found the cleaning rags and started wiping surfaces down-- at least the running water still worked in this place. Probably the whole place was poisonous, and he was going to have to clean it before he could trust Ciri not to get poisoned at random. Lambert would be a dick and Vesemir would be prickly, but Eskel would probably help with a minimum of complaint.

Vesemir eyed him. Geralt knew he’d be able to smell the girl on him, would know she’d slept in his bed. That wasn’t weird, was it? “Helps that she’s used to you, I guess,” he said. Geralt frowned at him, not understanding. “Usually kids’ first nights in this place weren’t peaceful.”

“No?” Geralt hadn’t really thought about how long it had probably been since a youngling had arrived.

“No,” Vesemir said. “You cried all night, for one. Took you three _weeks_ to sleep a night through.”

“I was tiny,” Geralt said.

“You were, that,” Vesemir said, and not for the first time, held his arms out as if holding a toddler against his hip. “That big, you were, sweet and round-cheeked and curly-headed little tyke.” He didn’t usually give a description, but he had often liked to show how tiny Geralt was, once. Ever since Geralt had reached his full size, it had been a recurring joke of Vesemir’s. Or, not a joke, perhaps, but. Something he liked to bring up.

“Why?” Geralt asked.

Vesemir looked at him, with an expression he couldn’t read, then filled the kettle at the standpipe and pushed an _Igni_ at it to get it most of the way warm before he swung it over the cookfire to boil the rest of the way. “I imagine you were cute because most kids that age are cute.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Geralt said. There were clean dishes stacked on the draining board, and he gave them a careful sniff to try and determine if they really were _actually_ clean. 

The door opened, and Coen came through. “Vesemir,” he said, “you want me to--” He paused, seeing Geralt. “Ah, good morning.”

Geralt nodded at him. He remembered meeting him, years ago on a contract-- something Eskel had set up, a big job, and Lambert had been off somewhere so they’d needed more backup. It hadn’t just been Coen, there’d been another Gryphon, and Geralt couldn’t remember his name but if he wasn’t here he probably was dead. 

“You want me to haul in some more firewood or is there enough here?” Coen went on, resuming his conversation with Vesemir.

“Should be enough,” Vesemir said. “I can get more, it’s all right. Will you do the animals, then?”

Coen nodded. “Snow hasn’t stopped,” he said. “Don’t think they’ll want a turn-out today.”

“I should probably take Roach out and walk her,” Geralt said. You couldn’t just put a horse away and let her stand after weeks of consistent hard work, she’d get tying-up, and that was a miserable time.

Coen grimaced. “Did you look out? It’s bad out there.”

“A few laps of the courtyard,” Geralt said. “At least stretch her legs. I’ll do it later.” He added, as Coen began to move away, “Watch out, though, she bites, if she’s awake enough.”

“I won’t get too close,” Coen said, and left.

Geralt turned back to Vesemir, meaning to press him again, but Vesemir spoke first.

“Eskel thought you were dead,” he said. 

There wasn’t much of an answer for that. “Well,” Geralt said. 

“I mean, he _really_ thought you were dead,” Vesemir said. “We all did, but. He took it hard, Geralt.”

Geralt nodded. It wasn’t hard to imagine; he’d nearly lost Eskel a time or two, and he didn’t imagine he’d take it well when it happened. It was part of being a Witcher-- not only facing your own death, but knowing you’d lose everyone else too, either one at a time or in a big chunk. Someday one of the two of them would die, and that would be that, and Geralt wasn’t really equipped to imagine it. 

Eskel had come to the keep a little older, but Geralt didn’t remember it well. Maybe six or seven. He knew they’d been friends since then, and he didn’t really remember a time when Eskel wasn’t around. 

He didn’t like to imagine Eskel going through that bag of knives and finding the little folding one. Probably hadn’t been pleasant. 

“I’ll talk to him,” he said. “I didn’t know he was looking, I could’ve used his help.” 

“You made it here,” Vesemir said. “Looks like it turned out all right.”

“It did,” Geralt said. “I got some help.”

“What kind of help?” Vesemir asked, stirring the porridge. Geralt sniffed suspiciously at it. “Oh come off it, boy, I know how to cook for a human child, I won’t poison her.” Geralt hopped back a pace to dodge the swipe of his heavy arm, and for a moment it was like he was five again.

The door opened, and Eskel came through. “There you are,” he said. 

“Here I am,” Geralt said. He went over and embraced him, because he hadn’t the night before. “Thanks for getting me out of the snow, by the way.”

A little startled, Eskel hesitated before returning his embrace. “I mean,” he said. “Be stupid to let you die on the doorstep.”

“Yeah,” Geralt said. “Be stupid to die on the doorstep.”

“True,” Eskel said. Geralt was still holding onto him, and he hadn’t pulled away either, and in a moment he sighed and Geralt felt his shoulders slacken as he tipped his head sideways against Geralt’s. 

Lambert came in, then, and Geralt let go of Eskel mostly in reflex. “Morning, lovebirds,” he said. “Did the surprise child survive the night?”

“She’s sleeping in,” Geralt said. 

Lambert started to say something, and then closed his mouth and looked at Geralt with his brows knit, suspicious. “Say,” he said. 

Geralt sighed, knowing that Lambert was smelling the girl on his clothes. But if he could smell that well, he could also smell the lack of any other particular kinds of scents. “I’ve claimed her _as a daughter_ , asshole. She’s _a little girl_. Who has nightmares sometimes because she just watched her family die and then got hunted through the wilderness for two weeks before I could catch up with her, and I’m not going to leave a crying child sitting alone in a dark room. If she’s in my bed it’s to _sleep_.”

“Mm,” Lambert said, unconvinced. “She’s not that little.”

Geralt wouldn’t have thought Lambert would be so protective of orphans, but then, there were no limits on things the guy could get upset about, so. Shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Lambert,” Eskel said, “Geralt wouldn’t even fuck that bard that wrote him the song, because he said the guy was too young, and he was like, twenty-five.”

"He was _eighteen_ ," Geralt corrected, and then cleared his throat. “He’s forty now,” he added.

Eskel caught a lot more out of that interjection than anyone else did, and turned to stare at Geralt, opening his mouth to comment on it, but Geralt ignored him and went on, instead, with the original conversation. “She doesn’t have anyone else left,” he said. “Everyone’s dead. That’s why I didn’t claim her before, because I figured, what could I possibly do for her? But now there’s no choice. So I’m going to do the best I can.”

__________

  
  


Yennefer hissed at her reflection, smoothing her fingers along the fading scars down her cheek. Fire magic had a horrible cost, and she’d drawn most of it out of the people she was killing and the pain she’d had stored up, but not all. 

She’d blasted her foes back, but not far enough; she’d been hiding ever since, half of her regenerating strength spent on healing and the other half constantly squandered on shields, on hiding, on running. 

She’d had little enough to spare on shielding Geralt’s Child Surprise, who was clearly a Source-- and Sources were the fucking worst, they had no abilities really, and couldn’t channel themselves effectively, and if the kid could learn control she could be powerful but sometimes the ability to learn control was completely absent. 

Geralt was going to have his hands full, and she was perfectly willing to leave him to it, except that she _couldn’t_. 

It was the djinn’s power, she knew that; the thing had spitefully twisted the wish because it was angry, and she was sure it had hooked the compulsion far deeper into her than into Geralt. She couldn’t not constantly have some small part of her attention devoted to him; she couldn’t even get herself off without thinking of him, which was _unbearable_ , if gratuitously hot.

But the bard had helped. He was the first thing she’d had enough energy to choose to squander some on, something just for her own satisfaction, and it had worked out better than she’d ever expected. He’d had a lot of perspective. She normally didn’t take humans terribly seriously-- it wasn’t precisely bigoted of her, it was just that their lives were so short, their experiences so shallow. But apparently being a massive slut could make up for that, because Jaskier had contained multitudes, sweet little filed away packets of memory about a collection of past lovers and acquaintances and comrades and passers-by, who he’d saved to write songs about, to write poems about, sometimes keeping a concrete detail but sometimes only preserving a wisp of a feeling. He hadn’t actually fucked _that_ many people, but he’d felt things about an awfully wide selection of people. _Massive slut_ was kind of an exaggeration, actually, now that she sifted through it all.

She was delighted to have discovered herself in there. Mostly bad stuff, but he’d absolutely used the pain and annoyance she’d caused him to write a fairly popular song, which was _fantastic_.

Most of it was all laced-through with Geralt, and she’d felt sort of viciously satisfied to find out that the fucking Witcher seemed to just do that even without any enchantments. There weren’t any-- that was all natural, improbable as it seemed. 

Well, now he had an even thicker file on her, and she had a location on him. She’d thoroughly blocked any kind of magical tracking from Geralt and Ciri-- nobody would ever find them with magic, and she’d peppered all kinds of decoy clues around that ought to keep Fringilla and the others well-occupied for a long time. Along the way, she’d discovered that there was quite a lot of energy being directed toward finding Ciri. Something was strange about that, and she was going to find out what, as soon as she could get any kind of a handle on the situation.

But now she knew where Jaskier was at all times, and was instantly notified if he had any very strong emotions.

(The first test of this was his reaction to reading her report. Most of it, he seemed fairly matter-of-fact about, but when she mentioned that the White Flame was what they called their _Emperor_ , not their god, he had a mild freakout. Which she sort of understood, actually-- it was a little disturbing to hear a human person spoken of in terms like that.)

She’d assumed he’d throw the ring in a bag or leave it on the bedside table or something in fairly short order, but he kept it on his finger. It was almost sweet. She’d seen him, plain as anything, thinking that it wasn’t his style and he’d put it on a chain around his neck or something-- she hadn’t had to read his thoughts to see what he was thinking in his expression. He was great that way. But here he was, a month later, still wearing the ring on his right hand. She could watch everything he did, if she wanted. (Left lying around somewhere, she’d only have been able to get faint impressions. She’d definitely over-powered this thing, if he was really wearing it.) 

And it wasn’t pathetic, if that was most of the words she heard spoken in a day. She was in hiding, in isolation, rebuilding herself and rebuilding her power. 

Her sight was normal in one eye again, and the other was blurry but usable. Not long now, then she could drop the enchantment that let her see correctly, and the glamor that let her appear normal that she had to pull on every time she went anywhere, and put that energy to use healing and be entirely better that much faster. 

And if one of her chief sources of entertainment while she waited to finish healing and waited to find out what Fringilla wanted with Ciri was watching Jaskier’s hilarious interactions with his colleagues, well.

Jaskier’s conversation partner was a serious, bookish middle-aged man with dark skin and a receding hairline. “Pancratz, you look fucking _awful_ ,” he said. 

“Darling,” Jaskier said, “I feel fantastic.”

“Your music theory section has started a rumor that you have a terrible disease and are dying,” the man said. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Nerio,” he said. “Everyone looks like this when they’re about to publish their masterwork.”

“What, another ballad?” Nerio asked. 

Jaskier made an emphatic facial gesture, enough to jar his posture somewhat, involving a deep sigh or intake of breath. “A _book_ ,” he said. “Don’t be a jerk or I won’t tell you.”

“I’m sorry,” Nerio said. “I’ll stop. What?”

“I finally have a definitive account of the Battle of Sodden Field,” Jaskier said. “All the witness accounts, documentation of troop movements-- I just have to finish collating it.”

“Tarnthold’s almost finished with his,” Nerio said mildly.

Jaskier snorted. “Tarnthold knows fucking _nothing_ ,” he said. “The only eyewitness he interviewed is _me_ , and he took terrible notes.”

“You told me yourself you couldn’t make the whole account cohere,” Nerio said. “That you’d been too close to the action to see the big picture.”

“I never said that,” Jaskier said. “I never said I was too close. I said I was as close as I could get without being killed, and I’d interviewed everyone I could find who was closer but they’d been too close to see it all, and I can tell by your phrasing that you’ve been talking to Tarnthold about this and not me.” 

“Well,” Nerio said reasonably, “what’s changed?”

“Everything,” Jaskier said, his voice dark with satisfaction. “I finally succeeded in securing the testimony of one final, key witness, who is able to tie the whole thing together.”

“When?” Nerio demanded.

Jaskier must have made some sort of elaborate facial expression, from the pause and Nerio’s reaction. “Three days ago,” he said. “Via an in-person interview _and_ correspondence. I have the account in her own handwriting. It is a rock-solid primary source, and the scaffolding upon which I can hang the entire piece, and I have almost finished the editing of it. Names, dates, concrete facts about troop movements, and sworn statements of otherwise-unverifiable deaths. Even some insight into political decisions leading up to it. Absolutely unassailable, absolutely comprehensive.”

“You didn’t go anywhere,” Nerio said mildly. 

“I didn’t have to,” Jaskier said. “The entire point is that I _had been_ somewhere. If I had not traveled as widely as I have, if I had not earned the trust of this source, and if I did not have adequate surrounding first-hand knowledge of the context of the scene, including knowing this was the source I had to ask, I would not have this information, and what’s more, _no one_ would have this information, because she is in hiding and not speaking to anyone else except for certain,” he paused, “dear old friends.”

“That’s almost too perfect,” Nerio said. “What did you have to do to get it?” 

There was a pause. 

“Oh don’t look like that,” Nerio said. 

“I literally, _literally_ , paid for it with my ass,” Jaskier said. “Literally.”

“Trust you,” Nerio said, disgusted, “to somehow make a scandal of this.”

“What can I say,” Jaskier said. “I lead a charmed life.”

Mildly displeased, Yennefer waited for him to say something disparaging about fucking her, but he didn’t. He changed the subject, and moved on, and didn’t mention her again.

The topic did come up, later; she listened in again to another conversation when it pinged to her attention because of the use of her name.

“You expect me to believe,” a sour-faced older man said, “that the noted mage Yennefer of Vengeburg gave you this testimony in exchange for you sleeping with her?”

“Well,” Jaskier said. “Don’t phrase it so crudely, it doesn’t do it justice.”

The two of them were alone in a room, and Jaskier was posed casually in a chair, arms crossed over his chest, leaning forward onto a table, but Yennefer could hear how fast his heart was beating. He was angry, or frightened.

“I’m sorry,” the older man said, “you seduced it out of her?”

“No,” Jaskier said, scornful, “ _Gods_ no, have you met her? No, not at all.”

“Then what?” the man said. 

Jaskier sat back in his chair. “She… well, all right, earlier in our travels we’d each separately tried to woo the same person, and she wanted to fuck me with his face on to do some sort of magical something or other, and I said I’d do it if she gave me the information I wanted.”

“Fuck you with his face on,” the old man said, disgusted and disbelieving. “What, so you’d look like him?”

“No, no,” Jaskier said, “ _she_ was wearing his face. It was all rather-- well, it was confusing, most of all, and I suppose it’s disingenuous of me to suggest that this was somehow something I _wanted_ , but I am willing to suffer for my career, and it was hardly the worst thing I’ve done, and I can’t imagine greater reward or nobler purpose.”

“I don’t think I even understand,” the old man said, but at least the confusion eased the sourness somewhat. 

“One does not _understand_ sorceresses,” Jaskier said. “You just-- try to survive them. Anyway the point is that I had a pre-existing personal relationship with this incredibly important historical figure and so I was able to reach an agreement with her where she consented to give me an unembellished factual account of this pivotal event. Which I could not have obtained without having earned her trust, in a measure. The salacious details are unimportant really, I only provide them so it’s clear I didn’t coerce her and didn’t inflict my own biases into the telling of the story.” 

He could have boasted and bragged, Yennefer reflected, returning to her other business. It probably wouldn’t have served him, though. It was a better story that he’d been a victim of her appetites. Which, really, he had, so.

A few days later, Yennefer was roused by Jaskier experiencing a deep sensation of alarm, and woke up to check in and discover that he was being gently, professionally interrogated by the Redanian Secret Services. “This is _a lot_ of information,” the serious-looking, grizzled officer was saying.

“I have a lot of sources,” Jaskier said. He was posed casually, again, but his heart was beating fast, again. 

“We understand that,” the officer said. 

“I’ve offered you information in the past,” Jaskier said, a little nettled, “and you never had much interest.”

“We took what was offered,” the officer said, “and were glad enough of it.” He leaned in, with a wry little smile. “I’m not one for poetry but some of the younger guys fight over whose turn it is to comb through your stuff every time you put out another book. Don’t think we’re not watching, we just figured you didn’t need us reminding you of it.”

“Fair,” Jaskier said.

Yennefer was well aware that for Redanians, national service wasn’t a voluntary thing. She’d sort of forgotten that Jaskier would also, of course, know that. He’d lived there most of his life, after all, and had been born to its service. Of course he was expected to report back after his travels.

“This latest work just shows a clearer eye than you’ve betrayed in the past, is all,” the officer said. “Might attract some attention. We’ve word that Nilfgaardian spies are about, and you may now present something of a target for them.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said. She felt him take a deep breath in, and let it out. “Yes, I was-- well, rather aware of that, but I didn’t see an alternative.”

“Well, we’ll be keeping an eye on you too,” the officer said. “Don’t be alarmed.”

“I’ll… try not to be,” Jaskier said. 

Yennefer mentally thumbed through her list of Redanian mages. Who was in Oxenfurt? Possibly time to make a call to them. Among all the other calls she had to make. Jaskier hadn’t told them about Ciri, though, she thought with interest; obviously, his patriotism did not extend that far. Fascinating. 

  
  


“Come off it,” Yennefer said. “I know you’re there, Triss.”

“I’m saving my strength,” Triss said back finally through the message portal, faintly.

“This is important,” Yennefer said.

Triss appeared, looking-- oh, she looked terrible, her hair all frizzed short and her face frazzled with healing burns. “What,” she said impatiently. Then, seeing Yennefer, “It fucking figures you’d look fine.”

“I’ve done a lot of work,” Yennefer said, and dropped the illusion she’d had in place just in case anyone was on the call with Triss. But she knew she looked better. She hesitated, then said, a little guiltily, “None of that’s… from me, is it?”

“Probably not,” Triss said wearily.

“I did try,” Yennefer said, “to be careful--” and she cut herself off. “Who have you heard from?”

“Tissaia,” Triss said. “You.”

Yennefer’s heart sank. “Vilgefortz?”

“Nothing,” Triss said. “You?”

“I’ve been in hiding, I haven’t heard from anyone,” Yennefer said. “But listen. I have to talk to you somewhere completely safe, I have things to tell you that I can’t risk anyone overhearing.”

“Anyone like who?” Triss said, frowning. “I’m in Temeria, who’s going to be eavesdropping?”

“Who _isn’t_ ,” Yennefer said. “You know they’ve got spies everywhere.”

Triss sighed. “I know,” she said. 

_____________

“I _really_ don’t like heights,” Geralt said, braced uneasily between the rickety ladder and the yet-more-rickety wall.

“You think I’m fond of them?” Eskel asked. He was footing the ladder, at least, but Geralt was uncomfortably aware that without Eskel’s weight, the thing would’ve skidded out from under him by now.

Geralt closed his eyes for a second, steadying himself, and then moved up one more rung. Eskel and Vesemir had rebuilt this wall as high as they could reach, and then as high as they could reach standing on the available stone blocks, and then had given up on it, and somehow, somehow it seemed to them reasonable that now that Geralt was here he could take over for the last several courses of stones. And it did need to be done, but the ladder was awful. And Vesemir had no head for heights at all. 

He assumed they’d already exerted all the leverage on Lambert they could bring to bear, which probably wasn’t much. And nobody was really willing to give Coen too hard a time yet. 

“This is awful,” Geralt said. “All right, hand me the trowel.”

Compounding the problem was the fact that neither Eskel nor Vesemir was a very great stonemason. The lower courses of the wall were… adequate, probably, but not great. But they just had to get it approximately weatherproof, and then they could frame the interior with carpentry, which all of them were reasonably decent at. 

Geralt did his best with the mortar, and then realized immediately that having Eskel hand him up stones was not going to work, because Eskel also had to keep the ladder braced. “We need a better ladder,” he said, “or better yet, a scaffold, and we need a pulley to bring the stones up. This isn’t going to do it.”

“If there was a sign we could use,” Eskel said, looking around like there’d be an idea lying on the ground in the half-ruined hall..

“You and your signs,” Geralt said. 

“You’re just jealous of my signs,” Eskel said.

“You’re just jealous of my everything,” Geralt said. “ _Don’t_ \-- let go of the _fucking ladder_ , you asshole.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Eskel said, steadying it again as Geralt attempted to meld himself into the wall. “Don’t be such a big baby.”

“You’re not up here,” Geralt said. “Sweet Melitele, let me down.”

Farther down the hallway, Ciri was having a lesson with Vesemir, and Geralt had absently been following the familiar noises of wooden swords, but now she suddenly let out a shrill, wrenching scream.

Geralt jumped off the ladder and was halfway down the hall before Eskel could react. 

“Ah, it’s all right, get up, you’re all right, try again,” Vesemir was saying, and then Geralt barrelled into the room and skidded to a halt.

Ciri looked up from the floor where she was shaking out her wrists. She had tears in her eyes but was otherwise calm.

Geralt stood there a moment, breathing hard, looking from one of them to the other. “It’s all right,” Vesemir said to him. 

“Sounded bad,” Geralt said.

Eskel trailed in. “You just jumped twenty-nine feet,” he said. “I mean, it was only about eight straight down but you didn’t hit the floor until halfway across it. Your ankles all right?”

Geralt ignored him. Ciri stood up, shaking out her hands. “I just fell,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m all right. It startled me.”

Geralt put his hand on top of her head briefly. “If you’re all right,” he said. She nodded, looking up at him. He nodded back, and turned and left.

Outside the door he leaned against the wall, breathing through the weird chill running through him. He had to bend over a bit and brace his hands on his knees and take a couple of deep breaths.

Eskel leaned on the wall next to him. “That really set you off,” he said.

“I dunno,” Geralt said. “It was a lot.”

“You have a rough time on the road with her?” Eskel asked. 

Geralt nodded. “Mornat,” he said. “Bandits. General bullshit.”

“A mornat,” Eskel said. “Those are nasty.”

“Got me,” Geralt said. 

“Oh no,” Eskel said. “Oh, _fuck_.”

“Yeah,” Geralt said. “For the record, Black Blood doesn’t slow ‘em down much.” 

“It wouldn’t, they’re the wrong category,” Eskel said. Then, “You didn’t.”

“Three times,” Geralt said. “Three days.” He shivered.

“Not a great idea,” Eskel said. 

“No choice. Lucked out, found a mage to get it out when I was almost dead,” Geralt said, “and then took me about a week to burn through the toxins.”

“Ran out of White Honey?” 

“Didn’t have any to begin with,” Geralt said. He shivered again. Hard to get a deep breath.

Eskel was silent a moment. “How did that not kill you?” he asked softly.

“Don’t rightly know,” Geralt said. “Pissed a lot of blood and was nightblind a while.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t go _blind_ blind,” Eskel said. 

“I know,” Geralt said. He straightened up. His hands were shaking, and he stuck them into his armpits to stop them. “Wow, this is stupid.”

“Hey,” Eskel said. He slid slightly over against the wall, pressing his shoulder against Geralt’s. “This is how it works, right? You hold it together and then you shake apart here, and then you put yourself back together and go back out.”

“The way it _works_ is we don’t _talk_ about it,” Geralt corrected stiffly. He was still shaking, worse if anything, and Eskel could certainly feel it where he was pressed against him. 

Eskel turned and put his arms around Geralt, carefully, crowding him a little, and Geralt put his face in the crook of Eskel’s neck and just breathed, eyes open, just breathed until his breaths weren’t shaky, mirrored Eskel’s breathing like he’d done before and they never talked about. “I know we don’t,” Eskel said softly. “But are you gonna raise this girl like that?”

Geralt squeezed his eyes shut. “No,” he said.

“Then you got some work to do on yourself, brother,” Eskel said grimly. 

“Fuck,” Geralt said. He breathed for a few more moments. “Do you remember Orbert?” he asked finally, softly.

“Yeah,” Eskel said. 

“What happened to him?” Geralt asked. 

“He went bad,” Eskel said. “Hurt Garvel, real bad, you remember.”

“Yeah,” Geralt breathed. They’d been-- young, still, maybe before the mutagens, he didn’t remember, but he knew Garvel and Orbert’d had a sparring match and Orbert took it too far. Not just a little too far-- _way_ too far, way beyond what was reasonable, and it wasn’t his first offense of that kind. He was a nasty kid, always angling to get one up on everyone else. “Then what?” He remembered it all very clearly, but he wanted Eskel to say it.

“Vesemir killed him,” Eskel said, very quietly. 

“Yeah,” Geralt answered, not even quite a whisper.

“He _had_ to,” Eskel said, low but intense. 

Geralt didn’t answer that, because there wasn’t an answer. He still remembered the sound of it, the steel and the bone. It wasn’t the first death he’d seen but it was maybe the first time he’d seen a Witcher properly kill someone, on purpose. Vesemir hadn’t hesitated. Steel blade, one stroke. Standing over the little body like he’d been standing over Ciri just now, afterward, as everyone stood in shocked silence. 

“You can’t make someone like that into a Witcher,” Eskel persisted. “Can’t give him that kind of power.”

“Yeah,” Geralt said. He took a deep breath and gently pushed Eskel away, but held onto his shoulders, looking at his chest rather than at his face. “Yeah.”

  
  


______________

  
  


Yennefer stepped through a portal to Novigrad, where Triss had set up to meet with her. They embraced in greeting, and clung together for a long moment, longer than Yennefer had intended. “How is Tissaia?” Yennefer asked finally.

“She’s all right,” Triss said. “Internal injuries, but she’s healed, mostly.”

Yennefer nodded. Triss led her into a little room where they sat together at a small table by a fireplace, with a teapot and a plate of lovely little cookies. It was very homey. And there was no trace of Nilfgaard, anywhere.

They shared what they knew, of how the war was progressing, what the members of the Brotherhood were up to. Triss shared a few grim details of the cleanup post-battle, the final tallies of who’d died for sure and who was still missing. 

“I gave as thorough an accounting as I could to that bard,” Yennefer said. “He’s writing a book.”

“Which bard?” Triss asked. 

“The one that hangs about with the Witcher all the time,” Yennefer said. 

Triss shook her head. “Which Witcher?”

“Geralt,” Yennefer said. “I know that you know him.”

“I do,” Triss said.

“Wasn’t the bard with him when you met him? They’re always together.” Triss shook her head. “Well, there’s a bard who dangles after him most of the time. And when he’s not following Geralt around, he’s at Oxenfurt, and I went there and told him the comprehensive story of the battle. So he could write a book. So people would know.”

“That seems… useful,” Triss said carefully. 

“It does,” Yennefer said. “At any rate-- about the Witcher. He has the girl.”

“What girl?” Triss asked, confused.

“The Cintran princess,” Yennefer said. Triss looked blank. “Pavetta’s daughter? Calanthe’s granddaughter?”

“I didn’t know she’d survived,” Triss said, interested. “Pavetta-- she was a Source, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” Yennefer said. “And so is the girl. She has some mage potential, I think, but-- she called me, in the woods, near Sodden Field, and I had to hide her as fast as I could. It wasn’t quite a Conduit moment, but it was-- there’s something there. So I’ve met her, and I know Geralt has her.”

“That’s really something,” Triss said.

“Nilfgaard is hunting her,” Yennefer said. “They want her, badly, and I’m not sure why, or how they knew what she was, or anything. None of it is clear to me yet, but they want her more than they want anything.”

“Hm,” Triss said, perplexed. “How well is she hidden?”

“Fairly well,” Yennefer said. “I couldn’t find her, until I managed to get the bard to let something slip. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“To me,” Triss said.

“She’s with Geralt,” Yennefer said. 

“Yes,” Triss said.

“I want to check up on them, and make sure she’s all right,” Yennefer said. “But.” And she made a gesture.

“But what?” Triss asked.

All right, maybe not everyone had been gossipping about Yennefer’s stupid love affair with the Witcher freak. “Geralt and I had a weird fling and a bad breakup,” Yennefer said, feeling like she was admitting something.

Triss looked shocked. “No,” she said. “Oh no! I didn’t know.”

She was either telling the truth or a very, very good dissimulator. “It was incredibly awkward,” Yennefer said. “He-- there was a djinn? It was all very confusing, and he made a really stupid wish, as far as I can tell, and it was all extremely--” She waved a hand. “Well, it was a disaster, and it was rather recent. And so I think I probably shouldn’t be the one to go and check on them.” 

Triss grimaced sympathetically. “I assume-- well, I guess I shouldn’t assume anything, since I hadn’t guessed the relationship existed,” she said.

“I dumped him,” Yennefer said. “But it wasn’t-- he’d--” She sighed, and gave up. “I’m still very conflicted about it and it’s messy, and the whole thing is stupid and beneath me, and I don’t want to upset myself _or_ him.”

Triss grimaced again. “Understandable,” she said. Then her expression shifted a little. “I never even thought of-- having an affair with a Witcher. I guess they’re-- I mean, they’re _people_.”

“He is a person,” Yennefer said. “I don’t know any other Witchers so I don’t know, but. He’s a person.”

“I thought they didn’t have… feelings,” Triss said.

“Well, it’s hard to evaluate that,” Yennefer said. “But I ask you, how would you have a person of normal intelligence who didn’t also have emotions? It seems to me that to get rid of emotions you have to get rid of a whole lot of stuff that you can’t have a thinking, reasoning creature without.”

Triss considered that. “The only time I really met him, he was unusually kind,” she said. “I mean, he really put himself out to do a kind thing, nearly got himself killed-- and I mean, it took him a full day to regain consciousness, I know because I had the care of him.”

“Really,” Yennefer said.

Triss nodded. “Got his throat mostly torn out lifting that curse from Foltest’s daughter.”

“I heard about that,” Yennefer said. “Well, not the throat tearing out part.”

“She very nearly killed him,” Triss said. 

Yennefer shook her head. He was an _idiot_ , that shouldn’t make her feel _fond_. “Well, enough about that,” she said. “My point is, I don’t think I should go to him, but I think someone should check in on that girl, and I think you’re the best-suited.” She made a face. “I don’t want Tissaia to treat this girl like she treated me.”

Triss glanced at Yennefer’s wrists. Of course she’d heard the story. “No,” she said slowly. “You’re right. Where are they?”

“Kaer Morhen,” Yennefer said.

Triss’s eyebrows rose. “The ruin?”

“I don’t know how ruined it is,” Yennefer said, “but I know Witchers still go there.”

“Oh dear,” Triss said. She considered it. “I’ll have to pack my woollens.”

  
  
  


On her way home Yennefer diverted through Redania, and stepped out of a portal just outside the estate of Lettenhove. There was a stately house there, as she’d expected, and she went up to the door, and when the chamberlain enquired as to who she was, she said she was someone important, and put enough magical emphasis behind it that the man went off slightly dazed and left a passing, bewildered footman to show her into a receiving room.

It was only a moment before a woman came into the room, which was who Yennefer had been trying to summon. A woman of a little over forty, perhaps, with dark hair and grey eyes and a long narrow face, slightly familiar. 

“Viscountess de Lettenhove, I presume?” Yennefer said, nodding her head in lieu of a bow when the woman did not speak, but only stood looking warily at her. “I am Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

The woman sucked in a breath. “It _is_ you,” she murmured. 

“How would you know me on sight?” Yennefer asked.

“There was a portrait,” the woman said. “I looked you up. The sorceress who turned my grandfather into a toad.”

Yennefer nodded graciously. “I did,” she said. “He deserved it.”

“I wrote you a letter, as a child,” the Viscountess said. 

“Asking me to turn him back?” Yennefer guessed, a little sadly.

The woman stared at her, then came the rest of the way into the room. “How do you know that?” she asked, quiet but intent. “I never sent it.”

“I’m a friend of your brother’s,” she said.

“He _told_ you--” the woman started, and bit it off.

“He thanked me for the toad thing,” Yennefer said. “He didn’t say much beyond that, but did say he was sorry the transformation had been temporary and hinted at a certain lack of reform in his behavior. So I thought I’d apologize for that; I could’ve made it permanent but didn’t because I didn’t think about future damage he might do. Also I didn’t figure I ought to unseat your entire dynasty over it.”

“Dynasty,” the woman snorted. Yennefer knew her name was Tristina, she had inherited from her father over her stepmother’s objections some twelve years before, said stepmother was semi-mysteriously dead ten years ago, and Tristina now had a perfectly nice husband who was a minor noble from Blaviken, and two smallish children. Her sources confirmed that the missing half-brother, Julian, had not visited since shortly after his father’s death, when he had been refused entry to the house. 

Her sources also confirmed that one of the new servants at the house was a Nilfgaardian spy, waiting to see if said missing older brother ever turned up. So one of the other new servants at the house was now very carefully observing the Nilfgaardian spy, and was actually from the Redanian secret services. It was all very neat and tidy. The Redanian secret services thought it was because the bard Jaskier was secretly a government agent in his information collection, and not just an academic. They weren’t, of course, in any way wrong about that, but that wasn’t why Nilfgaard wanted him. Almost nobody knew why Nilfgaard wanted him, including most of Nilfgaard.

Yennefer waited to see if Tristina would ask after her brother, or not. She almost did.

“Did he send you?” Tristina asked, finally. 

“Hm?” Yennefer tilted her head, politely, as if she hadn’t understood the question.

“Julian,” Tristina said. “Did he send-- any message?” She looked nervous, though she was clearly too well-bred to do anything so obvious as fidget. 

“No,” Yennefer said. “I didn’t tell him I was coming. We didn’t discuss family much apart from that one thing.”

Tristina’s chin went up slightly, eyes going downcast. “Well,” she said, “he made his grand escape,” and she looked-- sad, perhaps. 

“He _has_ been busy,” Yennefer said. 

Tristina made a scoffing sound. “Don’t I know it,” she said. She smiled bitterly. “Everyone wants to tell me all about whatever his latest scandal is all the time, like I’m somehow going to be amused by it.” Then, suddenly, her expression shifted, went wary. “Is that why you’re here? Has he finally done something-- oh Gods.”

“No,” Yennefer said, and then tilted her head to one side. “Well. Not like you’re thinking.”

“He’s finally done something serious enough that the King’s going to involve himself,” Tristina said, going pale. Redania’s monarchy did have a very finely-honed sense of entitlement, and did not look kindly on anything too contrary.

“Yes, but no,” Yennefer said. “It’s not like that. He’s done Redania a service-- I don’t know if you knew he’s obtained some renown as a scholar as well, and not just as a poet and a bard?”

“He puts out a lot of books,” Tristina said, still pale. “I do buy them all. I’m not-- disinterested.”

She resembled him so strongly, was the thing, but where he was movement, she was stillness, and where he was animation, she was flatness, and where he was color she was monochrome, and where he was bright she was dull, and it all was very clearly careful camouflage, to be unexceptional, to be inoffensive. She was his other half, his shadow.

“He’s been writing an account of the current Nilfgaard war,” Yennefer said. “And I helped him with some of it. But, partly as a result of that-- well, it’s an active war, I don’t know how much you know about it. And while he was collecting information, he helped a certain person of interest escape being killed in the fall of one of the southern nations. As a result, I believe Nilfgaard is hunting for him, to try to extract information on that person’s whereabouts.”

Tristina stared at her. “Well, he’s not _here_ ,” she said. “I feel like this would be the last place he’d ever come.”

“That was what I thought as well, but my sources tracked a Nilfgaardian spy here, so.” Yennefer shrugged. “I just thought I should warn you, Nilfgaard is watching you, from inside your household staff. I don’t think they’ll harm you, and in fact we’ve already put in countermeasures so they can’t. Also within your household staff. But it seemed unfair, to me, that you shouldn’t know at all.”

Tristina went even paler. “Wh,” she began, but cut it off, clearly at a loss for what to say. 

“The thing for you to do,” Yennefer said, “is to continue to act as though you think your long-lost brother is nothing more than a flighty wastrel. But I thought you should know, he’s a national hero, his life is in terrible danger, and he thinks you hate him.”

It wasn’t strictly fair, to add in a detail he’d never breathed aloud, but that she had effortlessly skimmed from his mind. However, Yennefer had never in her life played fair, and wasn’t going to now.

Tristina took a sharp breath at the last phrase, but then held it, not speaking. Finally, after a long moment, she whispered, “I don’t _hate_ him,” on her shaky exhale. 

“He has a spy here too,” Yennefer said, softer. “One of the household staff writes him regular letters, so he knows how you’re doing.”

“Perhaps I need to pay closer attention to my staffing,” Tristina said, brittle. 

“It’s not possible to know the hearts of all your people,” Yennefer said. “And I don’t think his source here considers what they’re doing to be spying.”

Tristina sighed, and looked down, off to the side. “Hanna,” she said quietly. Yennefer didn’t have to delve at all into her mind to skim off the knowledge that Hanna was old and had been here since they were children. 

“I would let her continue,” Yennefer said. “As I said, I don’t think you should alter any of your behavior at all.”

Tristina looked up at her, and her eyes were keen and familiar. Their different mother had given her slightly cooler coloring, a different chin, but the shape of her face and the sharpness of her eyes were Jaskier in a slightly warped mirror. “Why are you really telling me this?” she asked.

“Because I thought you deserved some insight,” Yennefer said. “And stopping by was on my way. As I said, he didn’t ask me to come, and I won’t tell him I was here because I don’t want him to change his behavior either. Nilfgaard is watching, after all.” She moved toward the door. “After I leave, no one but you will remember I was ever here.”

Tristina looked shocked briefly, but then her expression turned resolute and she nodded, and Yennefer left.


	3. Repairs

  
  


Ciri had been at Kaer Morhen for a bit more than a month, and had learned a great many things in that time. She’d been given her own wooden practice sword, and the old Witcher, Vesemir, had begun giving her formal lessons with it. She liked them very much, they were a little like the fencing lessons she’d had back in Cintra but much, much more interesting. Witchers used swords much less stiffly than soldiers, and relied on reflexes a lot more. She’d been taught to always keep the point of the sword toward her enemy, but many Witcher attacks involved leading with another body part and bringing the blade in, in motion already, for greater momentum. She liked it; it felt much more vicious. 

Vesemir was mostly gruff and unsmiling, but in warmer moments he said she was talented, and she liked that too. Tutors had called her talented before, had simpered over her various virtues, but it had never been particularly convincing. Vesemir was really not the simpering type, and it helped that he was teaching her incredibly violent things. She was also more motivated than she ever had been before.

She had seen a lot of violence, recently, and she had been powerless in the face of it. She didn’t want that feeling again, never wanted that helpless terror. Whatever else happened to her, she was going to be able to fight back.

The people here were strange, but all of them seemed to like Geralt. The people out in the world had been more mixed, on that-- in the little settlement where they’d stopped when Jaskier was injured, people had been cautious, but had warmed up. Other places, people had made superstitious signs against Geralt when they saw his eyes, and it was only because she was sitting so close up against his back that she’d been able to feel how tense that made him. He didn’t like it when people were afraid of him.

She’d never been afraid _of_ him, only _for_ him, but she understood, she supposed, how he might look frightening, even threatening. He was big, it was true, and his eyes were unusual, and his hair, well-- he wasn’t old, or didn’t look it anyway, but then his hair was such an odd silvery color. It wasn’t even quite, properly, the color of an old man’s hair, nor was it the ash-blonde of Ciri’s own, though she liked that it made him resemble her.

But she had only ever liked him, to see him, and it was hard for her to understand that other people didn’t feel that. To her, he radiated goodness in some strange way, and it was all she could really perceive. He was Good. 

She'd been a little bit afraid of the one Witcher, Eskel, who’d come out to find them in the snow. He looked scary, with half his face all clawed-up from something. But she had begun to realize that he was the kindest of them, and the most concerned for Geralt. Geralt loved him the best, she thought; they seemed to know one another almost without speaking, and Geralt even sometimes smiled when he looked at him. She’d seen them embrace several times, too, and Geralt leaned into him in a way he didn’t usually lean into people, closed his eyes in his presence more often than with others.

The other two younger Witchers were more standoffish. Coen almost never spoke, but watched all the others with his mouth closed, like he wasn’t sure of them and was ready for anything to happen. But Lambert, he spoke all the time. He had a piercing voice, and complained a lot, and said things that made the others testy with him, often crude things in kinds of language Ciri had only heard when guards didn’t know she could hear. But he never said anything offensive to her. She wondered if it was that he really didn’t want to offend her, or if he was afraid of Geralt. 

Geralt spent a lot of time with her, and she liked that. She got a bedroom that was right next to his, and if she was afraid, she would scratch at his door and he would always, always hear it. Sometimes he would invite her into his room and she would lie in his bed and he would stroke her hair, or talk to her. Sometimes if she cried out in her sleep he would come into her room and sit on the edge of her bed and hold her hand until she fell asleep. Either way, he always was there. 

During the day, sometimes he would set her things to read, and he would sit with her and read as well. Sometimes he would sit and write, and when she was finished with what she was reading he would give her what he had written. He explained that a lot of the books he’d studied from were gone now, and they’d have to go somewhere else to find them, but in the meantime, he was writing down what he remembered studying. But there were some things in the library here, and that was a good starting place.

He also did physical stuff with her, taught her some trick riding techniques, taught her a lot of balancing tricks and things, ways to run on high walls without falling off, ways to climb. Ways to fall and roll to get up fast, ways to jump over things and land without hurting herself. It was hard work and she was sore every night.

One day she was in the library, sitting at the big scarred oak table and reading by herself, as Geralt had gone to do some chore. (Sometimes she had to help with those-- cooking, or hauling firewood, or hauling water, feeding the horses or goats, collecting eggs from the chickens, or doing laundry or dishes. Those were annoying, but at least they were useful.) She heard someone’s foot shuffle, and looked up.

It was Lambert, leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed. “What’s he got you studying?” he asked.

She frowned at him. “He’s having me work through the big bestiary in sections,” she said. Something about him made her uneasy, more so than the others. Maybe because he made Geralt uneasy, though she didn’t know why; he hadn’t ever explained anything about who these people each were to him. 

“How far in are you?” he asked, pushing off the doorway and taking a couple of steps into the room. He came and leaned over the table, across from her, not right next to her. It wasn’t threatening, quite. 

“Well,” she said, “it’s not alphabetical, it seems to be organized by category. I’ve been reading about forktails and wyverns.”

He craned his neck, looking at the pages of annotations she was reading. “Is that-- did Geralt write that?”

“I think so,” she said. It was in his handwriting, and there were some reasonably-evocative sketches here and there.

Lambert shook his head. “He does know the most of any of us, I think,” he said. “He’d’ve been a good teacher.”

“I think he _is_ ,” Ciri said.

Lambert dragged out the chair on the other side of the table, where Geralt often sat, and planted himself in it, leaning forward and steepling his fingers on the tabletop. “Listen, kid,” he said, his voice quieter than normal. “I just wanted to talk to you for a minute about something.”

“What?” she asked warily.

“Geralt won you by the Law of Surprise, yeah?” he said. He looked unhappy, maybe, mouth a flat line. 

“Yes,” she said, very slowly. 

“I was a Child Surprise too,” he said. “Some Witcher saved my dad’s life, asked him for payment in the form of the first thing he saw when he got home. What’d he see?”

“You,” she guessed uneasily.

“Me,” Lambert said. “I was half-grown already and had a life of my own. How is that fair?”

She didn’t answer. 

“I had no choice,” Lambert said. “I had to come here. I had no choice once I was here, either. I had to do what they said. I had to go through the Trials. I had to watch all my friends die. And I had to go out on the Path.”

She didn’t have an answer for that, either. Finally she said, “Everyone I know is dead and I have nowhere else to go.”

He sighed. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have any choices,” he said. 

“What are you saying?” she asked. 

“Geralt was a child surprise too, I think,” Lambert went on. “He doesn’t remember being anywhere else, I don’t think, or at least he never talks about it; Vesemir says he came here when he was pretty tiny.”

“That’s what he told me,” Ciri said, “but he didn’t mention being a Surprise.”

“I don’t know if that part’s true,” Lambert conceded. “At any rate. He didn’t have a choice either.”

“He was forced to do it?” Ciri asked.

“Not exactly,” Lambert said, “but basically, yes. Look, he grew up here. He had no idea there were other ways to live. The first time he saw normal people, he was on the Path already, as a full-fledged Witcher. He never knew there was another way to be.”

“So?” Ciri said.

“So I _mean_ ,” Lambert said, leaning forward a little farther. “I know you don’t know me, kid, but I swore I’d never see another person forced to become a Witcher. I’m saying to you, and you don’t have to answer me now, but I’m saying-- if you don’t want to be a Witcher, you don’t have to be one. I’ll find a way out for you. I want you to have a choice, like I never did. Like Geralt never did. It’s not right; this isn’t the kind of life you should be forced into. That’s all I’m saying.”

She stared at him. “I _do_ want to be here,” she said finally. 

“That’s because we’re only doing the fun stuff with you,” he said. “And maybe it’ll stay fun-- I don’t think we have the ability to put you through the Trials like we had to go through, the real torture. The stuff that makes you a freak, forever.” He leaned back, away from her, dopping his hands to his lap. “I’m just saying, kid. Think it over. And if at any point this isn’t fun anymore, you come to me. I know I’m an asshole, but not about this.”

She stared uneasily at him for a moment, not sure what to think, and then movement in the doorway made her look up.

Geralt was standing there, arms crossed, face solemn. “He’s right,” he said quietly, and Lambert startled and looked around at him, but recovered quickly, chin jutting out with a stubborn expression. “No, you’re right, Lambert,” Geralt said, putting out a hand a little defensively. He stepped into the room, and put his hand on Lambert’s shoulder, and tightened his fingers, but only a little; it was a gentle gesture, almost affectionate.

“I don’t want anybody trapped like I was,” Lambert said doggedly.

“No,” Geralt said. “I don’t either, Lambert. I’m sorry.” To Ciri he said, “But I agree with him. You’re here because it’s the safest place, and I think we can teach you things you need to know. But I don’t know if we even _can_ make you a Witcher, let alone if we should. But even if we could, I don’t-- I always want you to feel like you’ve got a choice.”

“I want to learn how not to be helpless,” Ciri said. “I want to learn how to help people, like you do.”

Lambert looked at her, then looked up at Geralt. Geralt made a funny expression, his mouth twisting up on one side and an eyebrow going up. Lambert nodded, letting his breath out, and looked back at Ciri, then pushed to his feet.

“I’ve said my piece,” he said. “Think on it.”

“Thank you,” Geralt said to him. Lambert looked skeptical, and Geralt shook his head. “No, really. Thank you.”

Lambert left, and Geralt dropped into the chair he’d left empty. “Well,” he said. He looked tired.

“Were you a child of surprise?” Ciri asked.

Geralt raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know,” he said. “I feel like someone would have told me, but that may be a big assumption, around here. You may not have noticed this but we’re actually not great at talking about important things around here.”

Ciri fidgeted with her pen for a moment. “Did you have a choice, about being a Witcher?” she asked.

Geralt shook his head, looking down at his hands. “It’s as Lambert said,” he admitted. “I didn’t know there was any other way to live, until I was already changed into this.”

“Do you regret it?” she asked. “Do you wish you were something else?”

He sighed, and shook his head. “I don’t know what else I’d do,” he said. “No, I don’t really regret any of it, Ciri. But I want more for you than this.”

They sat in silence for a moment, and then Geralt said, “I think I should add, though, that when I came here as a little kid, it wasn’t like this. There were other kids, and there were a lot of people who lived here, and the roof covered all the rooms and there weren’t bones in the moat.”

“I should hope!” Ciri said, and then laughed, and he laughed as well. 

Geralt wished he had more of an education, because he could see things Ciri was lacking, but he didn’t know how to teach them to her. He knew that there was such a thing as the study of logic, and ethics. Those were things he felt might have been lacking in her upbringing, if she had been following Calanthe as a role model. Not that Calanthe hadn’t had good reasons for most of the things she’d done, but. Those were things that were important to Geralt, and he didn’t know how to explain them. 

“How did you learn right from wrong?” he asked Eskel, a little morosely, as they worked together on repairing a section of the roof next to the hall. Little by little, every winter, they repaired more of the keep, and then over the summer more bits of it fell down, and Geralt felt a bit guilty that he didn’t always come home to help with the repairs, but. Well. It was sort of like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon, really. At least they’d found a repair job that involved even _worse_ heights than the wall Geralt had failed at rebuilding earlier.

It wasn’t so bad up here. At least, it wasn’t so bad not being alone up here. And the roof was sturdier than the ladder.

“I guess the question is, _did_ I learn right from wrong,” Eskel answered. It was sunny today, which was why they were working up here, but it was bitter cold, and Eskel was somewhat ridiculously swaddled in a knitted muffler and hat.

Geralt was wearing the disreputable cap Jaskier had scrounged for him, though, so he didn’t feel he could comment. 

“You get it right some of the time,” Geralt said. “Did we have lessons in that sort of thing? I don’t remember.”

“No, I think we did,” Eskel said. “I mean, kind of mixed in with other stuff.” He wasn’t bad with a hammer, as it turned out. Geralt supposed one picked up certain skills in life, if one lived long enough. If he’d stayed any longer in that settlement with Jaskier after the arrow wound, he’d absolutely have been drafted into work parties. He wondered if he’d’ve been honest enough to admit that he knew a bit about general home repair, or if he’d’ve played stupid. 

Those people had been nice enough he probably would’ve been too much of a sucker to play stupid for long. Well, if you knew you could use Witcher reflexes without people freaking out, you were more likely to volunteer for stuff, that was how it worked.

“I guess that was how it was,” Geralt said. He wasn’t enjoying having to be the one holding the shingles; Eskel was putting the nails in pretty close to his fingers. But somebody had to do it, and Eskel hadn’t hit him yet. Neither of them had fallen off the roof yet either, so that was another one for the win column.

Debatable whether the fall would kill either of them outright. Probably would. Didn’t bear thinking about.

“Like, while we were doing other stuff, they’d talk to us about morals and whatnot,” Eskel said. He paused to scratch under his scarf with the handle of the hammer. 

“Yeah,” Geralt said. “But no, wasn’t there a class on contracts?”

“I dunno that it was a whole class,” Eskel said. They were making pretty decent progress, actually, Geralt thought. His basket was getting light. This was all the shingles they had, and once they were gone they’d have to go make more. Looked like Vesemir had done a lot of work getting trees cut and brought in; who knew where he’d learned to cut shingles. 

Naturally, as nobody was great with heights, it had fallen to Geralt. But at least Eskel was helping, now. This’d be miserable on his own.

“I think it was,” Geralt said. “Anyway. Given Ciri’s antecedents, I’m fairly concerned about making sure she actually has a solid handle on ethics and that sort of thing.”

“Antecedents,” Eskel said.

“I mean,” he said. “It’s not that they were bad people, but. Nobles that high, what do they know about real life?”

“There is that,” Eskel said. “But you don’t need a class to learn about real life.”

“I guess not,” Geralt said. “Oh, hey, we’re about out of shingles here.”

“Not bad,” Eskel said. “Vesemir said he’d--”

Just then Geralt heard a strange sort of ripping-cracking sound, not a physical sound but a magical one, and both he and Eskel startled a little as their medallions reacted to magic. “That’s a portal,” Geralt said.

“Fuck,” Eskel said. And just like that, he dashed for the ladder, leaving Geralt to haul himself up with great difficulty to the roof peak and follow him. 

They both hit the ground running. Neither of them had any swords on them. They rounded the corner into the main courtyard and both stopped short.

Coen was already standing there, sword out, and a portal had just snapped shut. The person who had clearly come through it was a woman, wrapped up against the cold. “Easy, now,” she said, and Geralt let his breath out as he recognized her by her voice.

“Triss Merigold,” he said. He didn’t know her well, but she’d done him a kindness, back in Temeria, years ago, with the striga. “Coen, it’s all right.”

“I didn’t mean to drop in unannounced,” she said, beaming up at Geralt, “but I also didn’t know how to announce myself, short of dropping in.”

Geralt paused mid-stride: she looked awful, healing scars half-faded discoloring her face and her hair either gone entirely or cropped short enough not to be visible under the hat pulled close around her face. He remembered her having beautiful, exuberant waves of hair. He recovered, and said, “Come, come inside, it’s freezing out here.”

“Oh,” she said, “thank you. Listen, someone asked me to look in on you, and said I might find you here.”

“Who?” Geralt asked, taking her the slightly more roundabout, but less debris-choked way to get to the southern hallway, where there was probably a fire at least in the kitchen, at this time of day. Lambert was out hunting, Vesemir and Ciri were doing sword lessons in the half-ruined north hall (which at least had a clear floor space, if not entirely windproof walls; sometimes the warmup had to be shoveling snow out of it), and Coen had obviously been keeping watch. From his state of dress, he had probably been working on armor repair. 

Eskel ducked ahead and opened the door for them, and Triss looked up worriedly into Geralt’s face as she went through the door.

“A friend of mine,” she said. “Yennefer of Vengerberg.” 

Geralt managed not to miss a stride. “She told you to look in on me?” he said. “And that I’d be here? How’d she know I was here?’

“The bard told her,” Triss said. “I don’t know him but I gather the two of you have a mutual friend who’s a bard?”

“A mutual friend,” Geralt said. He hadn’t thought Jaskier and Yennefer would even speak to one another. He had a sudden sinking feeling, similar to when he’d looked across the table and realized Jaskier and Ciri were tight enough to conspire against him now. “I suppose he must be.”

“She said you have a certain young person with you,” Triss said carefully. “And that she has good intelligence that this young person is being hunted rather assiduously by Nilfgaard.”

“I thought so, yes,” Geralt said. 

“She also said,” Triss said, and then hesitated, glancing at Coen and Eskel. 

“Why don’t I get you a cup of tea,” Eskel said, quick on the uptake. “Come on, Coen, let’s see if there’s any bread left.”

Coen looked between the two of them in some confusion, but then followed Eskel out. 

“What did she say?” Geralt asked, wishing he wasn’t quite so eager to know. He couldn’t really ignore the djinn wish forever; it was tugging at him strangely, and he was having a terrible time keeping it under wraps. He’d sort of been hoping, with the portal, but-- it didn’t bear thinking about.

“She said she didn’t want to come herself, because there was some awkwardness between the two of you,” Triss said more quietly, leaning in toward him.

“Mm,” Geralt said. That wasn’t… entirely untrue. It was a very charitable way of putting it, however. He tried not to feel hopeful about that; she might have just been glossing over it for the sake of conversation with her friend. 

“The most important thing, though, was that she said the girl with you is possibly a Source, or otherwise has some kind of mage potential in her,” Triss said. “And the thought it important that I come and check in with the girl, both to see that she’s all right and safe, and to evaluate whether she’ll need training to control herself. Most importantly, I need to make sure that Yennefer’s shields are holding and no one can use magic to locate this girl.”

Geralt nodded. “I had been thinking that,” he said. “We saw Yennefer, briefly, but I was injured and so couldn’t really get all that-- sorted out, really. Things were a bit hectic.”

“I understand,” Triss said. 

Geralt went and laid a fire, and Eskel came back with tea and some food. He checked in with Geralt, looking intently at him and raising his eyebrows questioningly, and Geralt gave him a reassuring nod. Triss did not miss this, but pretended not to be watching, instead busying herself with unwinding some of her scarves and shawls, and folding her cloak over the back of a chair. It wasn’t exactly warm in here, but it wasn’t as cold as outdoors. 

“Ciri should be finished with her fencing lesson fairly soon,” Geralt said. And then he stopped short, biting down to keep from gasping as he got a better look at the mostly-healed, but still visible, burn scars all over Triss’s face. 

She looked up at him and smiled softly. “The Battle of Sodden Field took a hard toll on those of us who survived it,” she said. 

As soon as Master Vesemir dismissed her from her lesson, Ciri ran down the hallway to the kitchen. Geralt was in there, and she ran straight to him, throwing herself down onto the bench next to him and leaning against him. “I did it, I made Master Vesemir drop his sword!”

“Did you,” Geralt said fondly, putting his arm around her. He looked maybe like he was proud of her, which was what she’d been hoping for. “Phew, child, you’ll need a bath tonight.”

“Well,” she said. “He made me do _a hundred_ wall-jumps.”

“Why?” Geralt asked. “What had you done?”

Ciri was about to protest that surely she hadn’t done anything _wrong_ , when she noticed that there was a stranger sitting on the other bench. A woman, pretty but with some scars on her face, and with short hair cropped close to her head. “Oh,” she said, and sat up straighter. 

“Hello,” the woman said. “I’m Triss Merigold.”

“I’m… Cirilla,” Ciri said, with a quick glance at Geralt, waiting for his nod before she said her name.

“Triss is an old friend of mine,” Geralt said. “She’s also a mage. Yennefer asked her to come look in on us for her.”

Ciri lit up. “She knows Yennefer?” She turned to look at Triss, who smiled. She really was very pretty. Not as pretty as Yennefer had been.   
“I do,” she said. “She and I went to school together. Well, not at the exact same time.”

“I heard,” Ciri said carefully, “that there is a Brotherhood of Sorcerers. But I had always wondered, is there not a Sisterhood?”

“There is not,” Triss said. “Perhaps there should be.”

They had lunch, then, and Geralt went to get the food together, leaving Triss and Ciri sitting alone at the table. It was some time now, Ciri realized, since she’d been in the presence of another woman, and it made her feel strange to think about it. Triss leaned in and said, conspiratorially, “This is almost as creepy as I had expected it to be when I heard there was a secret fortress full of Witchers in the mountain. Are they all very scary?”

“No,” Ciri said stoutly. “I like them. They’re nice to me.”

“Who’s the nicest?” Triss asked.

“Geralt,” she said, “but he has to be. He’s more or less my dad now.”

Triss looked thoughtful, with a little smile. She was _very_ pretty, despite the scars. “You know,” she said, “the first time I met Geralt, he was very kind to a young lady. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that he was nice to you.”

“Really,” Ciri said. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “ _How_ nice?” She’d sometimes heard the other Witchers making fun of Geralt for having love affairs with women. Or, maybe that was what it was. She didn’t always understand what they were referring to, and like most adults, they always refused to explain themselves.

Triss smiled wider. “There was a princess who’d been under a curse her whole life,” she said. “And it was a bad curse; she was a monster. There was no doubt of that-- she’d killed another Witcher, not long before, and she’d killed a lot of other people. Absolutely a monster. But, it wasn’t her fault; she’d been cursed before she was born, and she didn’t know what she was doing.”

“Oh,” Ciri said, horrified. “That can happen?”

“It can,” Triss said solemnly. “And Geralt discovered what the curse was, and that he could lift it, but only by fighting with her and staying alive for the whole night. And he did it, even though she beat him up something terrible, and when dawn came, she transformed back into a princess.”

“Oh, wow,” Ciri said. 

“And then the last thing she did was try to tear his throat out with the claws she still had,” Triss said, “so he almost died, and I saved him. But, still, he should get all the credit, because he did the hard part.”

“I lose points for biting her,” Geralt said, putting a plate down in front of Ciri and another in front of Triss. He tilted his head. “I’m not _that_ nice. But there’s the scar, if you want to see.”

Ciri peered at it, an indistinct mark of silver ridges across his pale skin, all knotted and creased with the skin of his neck and the movement of the tendons underneath. “Wait, you told us she bit you,” she said. “This is the story you told me and Jaskier!”

“Probably,” Geralt said. “To be honest some of the details are fuzzy to me. I thought we bit each other.”

“Oh, it was her claws,” Triss said, “because the blood was on her hands when I treated both of you.”

“Mm,” Geralt said, and went back to get his own bowl. 

“He didn’t tell us it was a princess he was rescuing,” Ciri said.

“Geralt doesn’t brag much,” Triss said. “But, come, tell me, who are the others, here?”

“This is Eskel,” Ciri said. “He’s, hm. I think he’s Geralt’s best friend.”

Eskel made a self-conscious little half-smile at that, and for a moment Ciri saw him through fresh eyes and realized his self-consciousness was that his scars distorted his expression when he smiled, and if you weren’t used to him it was hard to tell he was trying to be friendly. He was maybe nervous that this pretty visitor lady would think he was scary, Ciri thought, and the understanding made her feel warm inside. He sat down with his bowl a little distance away from Triss, across from Ciri, and said, in a gruff diffident tone like it didn’t matter to him, “Geralt and I have known each other since we were five.”

Triss gave him a considering look. “Bet you were cute kids.”

“They were,” Vesemir said. He sat down on Triss’s other side. “Who is this, Ciri?”

“Master Vesemir,” she said, “this is Triss Merigold, who is a mage and a friend of Geralt’s. Madame Merigold, this is Master Vesemir, the swordmaster and caretaker of Kaer Morhen.”

“Kid’s got good manners,” Vesemir said. 

“I _certainly_ can’t be given any credit for them,” Geralt said, sitting right next to Ciri with his bowl. 

“And this is Coen, who is from the School of the Gryphon,” Ciri said. She still didn’t have a good handle on him. 

“Where’s Lambert?” Eskel asked.

“Probably still out hunting,” Geralt said. 

“Who is he?” Triss asked. 

This was probably a test of some sort, Ciri thought, but if Geralt wasn’t stopping her, she thought she’d answer. “He’s another Wolf School witcher,” Ciri said. “Geralt pretends not to like him, but they’re quite good friends.”

Eskel barked out a short laugh, and then covered his mouth. Geralt got a funny expression but said nothing. 

“That seems about right,” Coen said, with a wry smile. 

“Don’t wreck my reputation for being a jerk,” Geralt said, and stood up from the table. He came back in a moment with another loaf of bread, and set it down. Vesemir picked up the knife to slice it, and gave Ciri a piece. 

“You did that yourself, when we first met,” Triss said. For some reason, out of Triss’s direct view, Eskel rolled his eyes, and Ciri made a face at him. He made a face back. She would have to chase down what _that_ was about.

After lunch, Triss went to the library with Ciri and Geralt to ask her more questions. Geralt hovered near the door, for some reason. “I assume there might be questions you want to ask her without me here,” he said, at Triss’s questioning look.

“Like what?” Ciri demanded. 

Geralt sighed. “I won’t go far,” he said.

“No, like _what_?” Ciri asked, feeling her heart start to pound. What could a mage possibly need to know that Geralt couldn’t hear, too?

Geralt’s expression went through several changes and he came around the table and sat down next to her. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll be right around the corner. I just think there are things you’ll want to talk to her about by yourself.”

“I can ask later,” Triss said to him, mouth pulling to one side. “It’s fine. She hardly knows me yet, she won’t want to talk to me about it.”

“About what?” Ciri asked. 

Geralt sighed, a slow in-and-out. “Probably things like you starting to menstruate,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing women are often pretty shy of talking about in front of men, which is why I didn’t know anything about it despite being so terribly old and knowing a lot of women in my life.”

Triss looked shocked, then thoughtful, and said, “Yes, I had thought of asking about that. I see the topic has come up.”

“In the most immediate and necessary way, yes,” Geralt said. “About five or six weeks ago now, actually.” 

“Oh dear,” Triss said, and looked at Ciri with sympathy. “And you had to explain to him, poor sweet. That must have been so embarrassing.”

“Oh, no,” Ciri said, “I didn’t know what it was. Why embarrassing, though?”

“Our companion, fortunately,” Geralt said, and for some reason his face was slightly pinker than its normal hue, “was conversant with the… issues.” He cleared his throat. “Of course there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” and he gave Triss a weird stern look. 

Triss’s face twisted strangely, and then she nodded, looking solemn. “Of course,” she said. “But that means you’re a woman now, and there are probably things another woman should explain to you.”

“Jaskier already told me all about sex,” Ciri said, “and how not to get pregnant, but I don’t like boys anyway so I don’t think I’ll need most of his advice.”

“Jaskier,” Triss said, her eyebrows climbing up her forehead.

“He’s a famous poet, did you know?” Ciri said. “Julian Pancratz. He says poets know everything about love, so he could tell me whatever I needed to know.”

“When one’s resources are limited, one uses the resources one has,” Geralt said, and he looked like he was trying to come across as unconcerned, but his voice was a little strangled and his face was quite pink, for him. “Of the three of us, Jaskier was in fact the most informed as to the nature of, er, what was going on.”

“Five or six weeks ago,” Triss said. “So has it happened again?”

“Oh,” Ciri said. “No! He said it would happen every month, you’re right, and it’s been longer than that.”

“Well,” Triss said, “it might take a while for it to settle down. But you should track it, make yourself a calendar and write down when it happens along with any other observations you might have-- did it hurt, did it last a long time, that sort of thing.” She glanced at Geralt a little self-consciously. “If it’s heavy or light-- like, was there a lot, or just a little. It can help you notice patterns and be prepared, and it’s an invaluable sort of information for a healer to use when treating you.”

Geralt had said women were sometimes shy of discussing it, and Ciri wondered if Triss didn’t want to talk about it front of Geralt. “If we had Geralt leave the room,” she said, “he’d probably be able to hear us anyway, so it’s just as well he’s right here.”

“Oh?” Triss said. 

“Witchers have very good hearing,” Ciri said. “You really can’t talk about them behind their backs at all, it’s never wise to assume. Probably Eskel’s in another hallway eavesdropping on us just in case we’re talking about something important. You don’t necessarily notice it at first but then you realize they keep turning up right at the end of important conversations just in time to add their opinion, and you think about how suspiciously good their timing is and eventually work out the pattern.”

Geralt put his hand over his mouth, and then said, “If Eskel were in another hallway eavesdropping I’d’ve heard him doing it, though. We can’t sneak up on each other. Sorry, dear, it’s really only you we do that to.”

“Walking’s quieter than talking,” Ciri said. “If I had any money I would bet it on Eskel listening somewhere right now.”

“Why would he do that?” Geralt asked.

“How often do we have visitors?” Ciri asked. “Someone must be listening, and I bet he’s the most likely, since Lambert’s not here.”

“We _should_ lay bets on it,” Geralt said speculatively. 

“But how will we catch them at it?” Ciri asked.

Geralt looked thoughtfully at the doorway. “By setting it up so they win by knowing about it.” He considered a moment, and then said, without raising his voice, “If Eskel’s listening, I will take over his turn at the dishes tonight.”

“Then we’ll,” Ciri said, stopped herself, and lowered her voice. “Then we’ll know,” she whispered.

Geralt raised an eyebrow, and winked at her, then laid a finger to his lips. 

  
  


________

  
  


A week or so after her visit to Lettenhove, Yennefer got another jolt of great emotion through the connection to Jaskier. The last great one had been about something he’d realized on his own, some poetic metaphor he’d come up with that remained entirely opaque to her even as he frantically scribbled it down, so she wasn’t expecting much.

But it was three days since she’d last heard from Triss, and she was a little bored; all her traps were set, all her plans were in motion, and she had to wait and see now. Jaskier was her last loose end, and she was fairly confident she had him tied up, but he still had the potential to have something go wrong.

She’d already thwarted two attempts by Nilfgaard to take Jaskier. They still didn’t know who was working against them, but now the Redanian Secret Service knew about it, and Jaskier’s odds of survival kept going up and up. But that still didn’t mean he was safe. 

This was, however, not an attempted abduction. It was a letter.

It was a letter from, in fact, Hanna, from Lettenhove, the apparently usual one full of trifling updates. But inside it was another letter, and Jaskier had dropped it onto his desk and was sitting and staring at it.

It was sealed with a crest, probably the Pancratz family one. Jaskier’s shaking hand opened the seal, after a moment, and his eyes were moving too wildly at first for Yennefer to read it, but then he settled down.

 _Julian,_ it read.

 _I found out Hanna’s been writing to you. Don’t worry, I haven’t scolded her, I just asked her to include this note from me._ _  
_ _I hope this finds you well. I’m told you’re possibly in some danger after writing a book that possibly got you too close to some current events. I’m told they may be watching me, to see if you come to me, so if you write back, do so via Hanna, don’t change your behavior._

_But you don’t have to write back._

_I just wanted to tell you that I have all your poems and I noticed that one. I did. I copied it down and it’s glued to the bottom of my cosmetics case and I read it when I do my makeup. Not every day, but always before court._

_My son loves to sing, like you used to, and I have never told him to be quiet. I will have to, he’s going to be old enough to go to court, but I will never beat him for it. I promise you, I will find another way to get him to act suitable enough. I am weighing my bribery options._

_I’m still angry you escaped. But I can’t hate you for it. I never did, Julek. You did what you had to. I hope you’ve stayed free._

_It doesn’t sound like it._

_Tristineshka_

It was saccharine, but suitable, and Yennefer was delighted that she hadn’t been mentioned.

Jaskier slid down out of his chair and sat on the floor next to his desk as he cried over it for a little while, and Yennefer left him to it, satisfied.


	4. Supervision

Kaer Morhen had a lot of spare rooms, but of those spare rooms, ones with intact roofs, walls, _and_ windows were in rare supply. It was the fearsome-looking Eskel who wound up going with her to search for suitable accommodations. “I don’t mean to impose,” Triss said, “but--”

“No, it makes sense for you to stay,” Eskel said. “Honestly I’m glad you’re here. I think Geralt already knows he’s in a little over his head with this. Bad enough suddenly needing to figure out what a kid needs, but she’s also a girl, and maybe Geralt knows more about girls than most of us but he’s still not exactly educated.”

“What do you mean, he knows more about girls?” Triss asked, as he checked another door and made a face. 

“The damn roof,” he said, and they continued down the hall. “Oh, I mean-- Geralt… well, he’s a little better at fitting into society in general than the rest of us, so he… interacts more… with women.” Eskel was clearly working very hard to come up with the words to say this.

“You mean he gets laid regularly,” Triss said, sparing him the need to be delicate.

“I wouldn’t say _regularly_ ,” Eskel said, amused. “But more often.”

“He’s better at society than you?” Triss was skeptical. “You seem reasonably well-socialized, to me.”

Eskel gave her a look that was hard to read, and continued down the hallway. “I’m missing half my face,” he said in a moment, a little curt. “Tends to put people off.” 

It certainly wasn’t half his face, and Triss had already gotten used to it, but she guiltily remembered her first impression, which had been that he was the scariest person here. “Does it really?” she said. “Everybody here has scars on their faces, though. I was starting to wonder if it was an initiation thing.”

Eskel swung around suddenly, leaning slightly into her personal space, and she shrank back in sudden fear from his frightful expression. Then he laughed, a little bitterly, and turned around and kept walking. “It does,” he said. “Weird. No, it’s not an initiation thing, it’s just an occupational hazard of getting the shit beat out of you by supernatural horrors for a living.”

“That wasn’t playing fair,” Triss protested. “It wasn’t your face that scared me so much as you being twice my size and _looming_ at me in a dark hallway! Maybe don’t do that to people!”

“And you thought I was well-socialized,” he said. “This end, the roof should be better, Geralt and I were working on some of it, but that means it’s hard to tell because there’ll already be damage in the rooms. We hadn’t got around to cleaning that up yet.”

“I guess you were busy lurking around eavesdropping like a creep,” Triss said, teasing a little. Ciri had been delighted to discover that Geralt was doing dishes after dinner, and Eskel had very sweetly gathered her under his arm as he sat and explained to her that nobody in Kaer Morhen was capable in the slightest of communicating effectively and so if you ever wanted to know what was happening to the people you cared about, you had to eavesdrop, and so she should just assume she was under supervision at all times. He'd thought better of it and amended it to _most_ times, after a moment, but Ciri had been too amused to be creeped-out and Triss had decided to follow her lead.

“I have my specialties,” Eskel said. He led her into a room, which was bare of furnishings but had an intact window. “Here, the roof’s fixed here, and I know that chimney’s sound. Most of us have bedrooms down that corridor there-- Geralt’s the second door in, and Ciri’s room opens off of his, it was a dressing room originally. She might need more privacy but right now, you maybe noticed she really doesn’t like to be much apart from him.”

“I did notice,” Triss said. “I imagine it was hard for her when her family died.”

“Took Geralt two weeks to find her,” Eskel said, “so she had to make her way on her own that whole time, and she was being hunted, so she’s got some leftover fear from all that.” He sighed. “I was looking, too, but that was a pretty bad part of the world at the time.”

“True,” Triss said.

“So will this room suit? I’ll lay a fire and get Lambert to help me haul in some furniture. I know there’s a good bed ready to go, we were ready for more Gryphons to come this winter only they all apparently fucking died or something so it’s just Coen. Probably I can get you a couple of chairs and a table, maybe a settee or something, but I’ll start with the firewood.”

“It will suit perfectly,” she said. 

Everyone helped with furniture, and she was delighted to witness Eskel using one of the funny little hand-spells Witchers were so secretive about to light the fire. It almost looked like he was drawing a letter with his fingers and then pushing it with a hand gesture, and it glittered and sparked and lit the fire into a bright blaze instantly.

“How do those work?” Triss asked, forgetting herself so much that she reached out and grabbed Eskel’s wrist. Bemused, he let her, and she turned his hand over and looked at his palm. 

He had big, battered hands, with calluses and old scars and new scrapes, stained with dirt and clear signs of alchemical work, but scrubbed as clean as they could be. And there was no sign of magic on them; she wouldn’t have guessed he had any magical ability. 

“Signs?” he said. “They’re just-- it’s a single gesture and you cast it by rote.”

“Show me?” she said.

He gave her a considering look. “I’m not about to light the rest of the room on fire,” he said dryly. “Maybe we can give you a demonstration tomorrow, Ciri should learn about them too.”

“I want to learn to cast Signs,” Ciri said, setting down the pile of blankets she’d been carrying and bouncing over to them. 

Eskel freed his hand from Triss and reached out to take both of Ciri’s in both of his, crouching down to examine them from closer up. Triss looked too. They just looked like a girl’s hands, somewhat ink-stained and battered with recent blisters from work, a little cold-chapped and with the nails recently-bitten. 

“The ability to cast Signs comes after the first round of mutations,” Eskel said somberly, folding his big hands around her little ones. He pretended to be serious a lot, when he was kidding, but this sounded like he was genuinely being serious. “You may or may not be able to work around that, Ciri. Signs aren’t everything. I rely on them heavily, but Geralt hardly uses them.” And then his somberness cracked a little, and he said, “Because he sucks at them.”

Geralt put down the heavy-looking chair he’d been carrying and turned, not even winded, to stare Eskel down over Ciri’s head. “I don’t have time to kick your ass just now.”

“You couldn’t anyway,” Eskel said, and turned his gaze back to Ciri’s hands. “But I’ll show you tomorrow. I don’t know how to tell if somebody’s going to be able to learn but I remember how to teach them.”

A wave of golden light suddenly shimmered over Triss, and she turned in alarm and astonishment to see Geralt pushing a sign toward them. It settled around her, Eskel, and Ciri, and Ciri looked up in wonder. 

“This one’s called _Quen_ ,” Eskel said, “and you can see how hard Geralt had to work to do one this big.”

“What does it do?” Triss asked, and extended a finger to touch the shimmering surface. She couldn’t push through it, and it shimmered brighter at her touch. Given time, she could certainly analyze it, but she thought asking questions was likely a more direct route to the knowledge she wanted.

“It’s a shield,” Eskel said, “and he put it around us facing inward, which is tricky and not really at all what the spell’s designed to do. Usually you put it around yourself. It’s hard to hold like this.”

“Oh, are we trapped?” Triss asked.

“Not really,” Eskel said. “There’s a different one you use if you want to trap someone, but this one is prettier, if ineffective for this purpose. He was just trying to impress you without scaring you, I think.” Eskel put a hand out and the golden light dissolved. Geralt was on the other side of the room helping Lambert wrestle the mattress onto the bed. As the light vanished, Eskel laughed, and Geralt extended his hand behind himself to give him the finger.

“Ah, in front of the kid?” Eskel protested, standing up and putting his hands on his hips.

“She’s Calanthe’s kid,” Geralt said dryly, “you think she doesn’t know that one?”

At length the room was set up to everyone’s satisfaction, and Geralt went off to send Ciri to the bath with many protestations that he easily cut off by telling her he’d comb her hair out for her afterward. As bribes went, it seemed a silly one, but Triss remembered her own father, in her earliest memories, being so patient with her curls in a way her harried mother often wasn’t, and could immediately understand the allure. Of course Ciri was well old enough to see to her own grooming, but Geralt himself had long hair, and from seeing that none of the other Witchers really did, Triss could see now that it was an affectation on his part. So, clearly, he was good at combing hair, and from Ciri's sudden compliance, she knew it. 

As soon as she was alone, Triss rearranged the furniture she could move on her own, splashed out a little bit of magic to improve things to her tastes (including insulating charms on the intact but terrible windows), and then set up her megascope communicator so she could call and give Yennefer all the dirt.

Yennefer answered with remarkable quickness. Triss had rather expected it to take some time for her friend to get back to her, and so had initiated and then wandered off to finish cleaning up the room. She had to hop back into range when Yennefer’s reply came back, and suppressed an unflattering mental image of Yennefer as a bored spider in the middle of a web. 

“They had to repair a section of roof so there’d be somewhere for me to sleep,” Triss said. 

“Oh, that good?” Yennefer looked delighted. 

“It’s a creepy ruined fortress in the mountains,” Triss said, “just like you said.”

“Are there a lot of Witchers there?” Yennefer asked. “I admit I am wild with curiosity.”

“There are five,” Triss said. 

“Five,” Yennefer said thoughtfully. “I’m not sure what I expected. More than that, I think. He only ever mentioned one of them, though.”

“Ooh, tell me which one he talked about,” Triss said. “Then I can show you what they look like and see if it’s anything like what you expected.”

“Eskel,” Yennefer said. “He mentioned Eskel. Just in passing, but-- I think Eskel must be, hm. I’m imagining him… Small. Dark. Clever. Cute.”

“A cute Witcher,” Triss said. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“Are none of them cute?” Yennefer asked. 

Triss laughed. “It’s going to depend on your definition of _cute_ ,” she said. “I would say no, not objectively, but several of them are very cute with the girl. All right, here’s Eskel.”

She conjured the illusion she’d captured, as Eskel had come out from the kitchen to sit on the bench by the fire and Ciri had laughingly confronted him about eavesdropping. He’d put his arm around Ciri and leaned over to explain conspiratorially about it, and Ciri had tucked herself up against his side like she belonged there. By coincidence, the illusion began with the good side of his face toward the viewer’s eye, and then he turned and the scarred side showed as he looked down at Ciri.

“Yikes,” Yennefer said, “what is that on his face?”

“Something tried to rip his face off,” Triss said. “He’s well aware of how it looks. For the record, he’s by far the sweetest of them.”

“Including Geralt?” Yennefer asked.

Triss sighed, and showed her an illusion of what Geralt had looked like, as Ciri had come running into the kitchen after her sword lesson and had leaped more or less into his lap. His smile of unrestrained delight, and the fond disgust with which he’d commented on her odor, quite transformed his face. “He has his moments,” Triss conceded. 

Yennefer was watching the illusion with an unguarded expression of naked longing that quite startled Triss. She’d idly thought of asking her friend whether it would be all right if she pursued Geralt herself, because he did look like fun and was really quite attractive. But Yen was very, very clearly not at all over him, and Triss thought rather sadly that it would probably mean giving up on ever being friends with Yennefer again, even to entertain the thought. 

So she filed it away, and in a moment, brought up an illusory memory of Geralt, pink-cheeked, attempting to explain to Ciri that while of course she shouldn’t be ashamed of her body, some people _were_ , and so, well… 

“Ciri has started menstruating,” Triss said, “and Geralt didn’t know what it was, so Jaskier had to explain it to her, but seems to have done a very good job. She had no idea this was something people might consider embarrassing, which I suppose is just as well.”

“Isn’t she too young?” Yennefer asked, horrified.

“She’s almost fourteen,” Triss said. “It’s not really unusual.”

“She looks younger,” Yennefer said.

“She seems like a good kid,” Triss said. “I haven’t gotten to speak with her much. Geralt tried to get her to talk to me alone about her period but she panicked at the thought of being separated from him. I think she got rather a bit traumatized in all the, you know.” She gestured vaguely. “It’s a shame, but he is quite good with her. They all are, she seems very comfortable with all of them. I managed to talk to Geralt alone briefly, before that, because she was off taking a fencing lesson with one of the others. So it’s not that she won’t do things without Geralt, it’s that I was a stranger.”

“I see,” Yennefer said. She looked thoughtful. “Most girls manifest their conduit moments after menarche,” she said.

“This is true,” Triss said. 

“She’s probably exceptionally vulnerable right now,” Yennefer went on.

Triss nodded. “You were right to send me here,” she said. “I guess I’m glad I brought my woollens.” 

_______

  
  


Lambert paused at the end of the hall, and when his suspicions were confirmed by a faint sound, he crouched down and sat on his heels, back against the wall, and settled himself patiently.

He wasn’t _listening_ , he was just-- on patrol, and this was a normal thing he kept tabs on.

Very, very quietly, Eskel let out a muffled groan, and Geralt made a soft, high, breathy noise. They really were being very quiet, but of course, Lambert had very, very good ears, and knew exactly where to stand to hear best when they were in this room.

Lambert pulled out the little notebook he kept with him, flipped to a certain page, and made a little tally mark. That was enough data; Geralt only made that kind of sound for one reason. 

He had literal decades of data on this. It was just one of the things he kept tabs on. Geralt and Eskel fucked, and while they had a small repertoire of sex acts, when it was relevant they religiously traded off whose turn it was to be the penetrating partner and which the receiving one, to the point of more or less complete equality, and on several occasions had remembered across a span of years whose turn it was to do which. 

He didn’t judge them, of course, for any of it. It would be stupid to judge them for something that just seemed to be a part of how the world worked. He’d been collecting data on it since before he really understood what was actually going on; they’d been full-fledged, On The Path Witchers when he’d still been a kid here, too young to know what was what. (His data from that era was a great deal less detailed than it was now that he knew what was actually going on.)

Lambert and Eskel fucked sometimes, too, though generally not when Geralt was around. Lambert wondered sometimes whether Geralt would be upset, if he thought Eskel was only his-- but he suspected not. Geralt seemed to be one of those people who just didn't form connections like that, didn't get possessive. At least, not over Eskel. Lambert and Eskel mostly didn’t penetrate one another, and Lambert didn’t push the issue, and didn’t mention any of his statistical analysis projects either.

Geralt wasn’t fond of Lambert, though, so Lambert wasn’t ever going to bring any of it up with him. In fact, Lambert wasn’t ever going to bring any of this up with anyone. He wasn’t even sure why he cared so much-- well, it wasn’t even that he _cared_ , it was just that it was one of the things about the world in which he lived, and one of the few reliable things, and so he was going to keep tabs on it, because that was what he did. 

They also traded off whose room they’d do it in, but more often used Geralt’s, as it was farther away from everyone else’s. Or, at least, from Vesemir’s. It was unclear to Lambert whether Vesemir would care, but it was also not something he was ever going to bring up. Vesemir probably knew; it was hard to really hide anything from someone with a Witcher’s sense of smell, and most of the time when Geralt was here he and Eskel smelled of each other, at least faintly; they just spent so much time together. But it was one of many things that was never discussed. 

Lambert figured, though, that they wouldn’t want the kid to walk in on them. Even if she was used to sleeping in Geralt’s bed, and that wasn’t weird to her, sleeping in Geralt’s bed with Eskel also there probably would be weird. Lambert had grown up in the kind of peasant household where there was just the one bed and most everybody piled into it in various configurations and he’d never not known basically everything there was to know about what people got up to in beds, but he knew that wasn’t how nobles lived, and that girl was as noble as they came. 

The quiet noises grew breathier and more intense, and Lambert listened harder, waiting for the punchline, as it were. Was that it? Probably, that desperate strangled high noise was Geralt’s climax, and Lambert turned the page to make a notation, but then he heard Eskel’s lower, soft noises, and nodded, moderately impressed. Simultaneous, or near enough-- not bad. That meant a mark in a different column. Nice. 

He stayed crouched there a few more moments, listening to the restful quiet, and then the soft murmur of voices as they talked things over. He couldn’t make out words from here, but he could tell Geralt was as emotional as he got, generally, which was kind of sweet. He’d been riding a rough edge a while, looked like; Vesemir had always said that there were some Witchers who fit in well enough out in society that they hadn’t needed to come back to Kaer Morhen for the winters, and had indicated that was why Geralt didn’t come back every winter while the rest of them mostly did, but Lambert had always suspected that wasn’t what was going on, at all. Sure, Geralt was more famous than the others, with his songs and his relatively-un-mangled pretty face and his habits of getting politically-involved and such, but that didn’t mean he fit in out there, and the state he was usually in when he came back was clear enough demonstration of that.

Lambert turned the page and made a few more notes, then wiped his pen clean and put it away. He was standing up when he heard the scuff of a footstep in the hallway, and turned.

Coen was standing there, looking warily around. Lambert gave him a quizzical look. 

“Did you-- hear something?” Coen murmured, very quietly. He had a hand to his medallion, holding it. “Or--”

Lambert touched his own medallion. It hadn’t alerted to anything in particular, but it was a little bit warm. Unsurprising, it had been tingling at him about the damn sorceress since she’d shown up-- which had made for a nerve-wracking return from his hunt, to be sure, half-expecting to find Kaer Morhen under attack. He’d been mightily annoyed to come running back up here like a fool and find them all sitting around laughing and shooting the shit like there was nothing to be worried about. 

“Probably that mage,” he said. “You think she’s up to something?”

“How would we know?” Coen asked grimly. “All we know about her is that your Geralt says he knows her. He a good judge of character?”

Lambert considered that. If Geralt was letting Eskel fuck him right now, he clearly was not in any way worried about the sorceress getting up to something while unsupervised. He’d even left Ciri alone to do it, too. And Geralt was, if nothing else, paranoid as the rest of them. 

Didn’t mean he was right about this, though. “We’re not in the habit of letting mages into Kaer Morhen, if that’s what you’re asking,” he answered. 

They moved silently down the hall and took up stations opposite the sorceress’s bedroom door. Lot of magic, here; Lambert’s medallion alerted a couple times and then just sat there, warm and slightly buzzing against his chest. 

The rumor was that Geralt had been fucking a sorceress for a while, and Lambert couldn’t imagine that. Did your medallion just burn you the whole time, or did it stop bothering to tell you anything, or did you have to ask her to ease off on that shit in intimate moments, or did Geralt just get off on that or something? How would you possibly stay sharp, with that kind of crap going on all the time? 

On the other side of the door, the mage was talking, in friendly conversational tones. She laughed, a friendly conversation kind of laugh, genuine and amused. 

There was a second voice, another woman. Coen grimaced, and held up two fingers, and Lambert nodded, confirming it. How, though? He was sure he’d’ve felt a portal. 

But what were their options? Burst in on the mage and hope to-- what? If there were two of them, even worse. Coen was clearly thinking the same thing.

Lambert steeled himself, and went and focused on listening to what the mage was saying, to get some idea about what they possibly could be planning. 

“-- should be going, really,” Merigold was saying. “I’m sure they’re up early here.”

“Of course, of course,” said the other voice. Lambert couldn’t identify it, beyond that it was a woman’s voice. “I just had to tell the story--”

“Yennefer, it’s such a good story,” Merigold said. “I can’t believe-- with _his face_ on,” and she was laughing. “You know that’s all I’m going to be able to think about tomorrow when I’m talking to him.”

“Oh don’t tell him though,” the other woman, Yennefer?, said. 

“Maybe we can get him to use this thing,” Merigold said, “and you can tell him yourself.”

“I don’t know about that,” probably-Yennefer said. 

“You’ve got to face him sometime,” Merigold said. “This is too important. Yennefer, don’t let it rule you.”

“I’ve never let anything rule me,” Yennefer said. 

Coen made a face at Lambert, clearly not understanding any of what was going on. Lambert rolled his eyes a little. It really didn’t sound like they were plotting anything particularly immediate. 

“I know you haven’t,” Merigold said, soft and warm. “It’s one of several things I admire about you. But listen, that’s ideal, to talk to him without being physically present-- and I’m here, I can observe and see if the djinn’s effects are anything concrete. Why not?”

There was quiet for a moment, and the other woman said, “You’re not wrong, but I’m not sure about it. I’ll talk to you tomorrow about it, and I’ll probably have more to report on other fronts as well, and we can, well-- we’ll see, all right?”

“Of course,” Merigold said. “Well, I think I should go. Tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow,” the other said, and there was a strange humming sound. Or-- no, a humming Lambert hadn’t really been aware of hearing ceased, and his medallion shivered and went inert. The light level in the hallway changed slightly too-- something bright in the mage’s room had gone dark.

Coen frowned, and Lambert shrugged, gesturing that they should move away from the woman’s door so they could talk. They retreated a distance down the hallway, and he said, “I think she was using some kind of communicator.”

Coen’s face cleared in understanding, and he nodded. “So she was alone in there,” he said.

Lambert nodded. Less scary, then. “She called the other woman Yennefer,” Lambert went on in a moment. “I bet that’s Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

“I’m not familiar,” Coen said.

“Geralt was fucking her for a while,” Lambert said. “Powerful mage.”

“I cannot imagine ever wanting to fuck a mage,” Coen said. “It just seems like a terrible idea. They’re so dangerous!”

“Geralt,” Lambert said, and paused to consider how to say it. “Will fuck anything,” he finished, though that wasn’t quite it. “He really has no sense about it. He’s... “ He shook his head. There weren’t words. He sighed, giving up on it. 

Coen laughed softly. “One in every school,” he said, but then he looked sad, and Lambert figured his Geralt was dead, so he didn’t ask.

_________

“So this Merigold,” Lambert said, leaning in uncomfortably close as Geralt carried a stack of plates from the draining board to the table by the cookfire. “How well you know her?”

“Well enough,” Geralt said, eyeing him. He set the dishes down and straightened up, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You seemed _pretty comfortable_ last night,” Lambert said, with significant emphasis, “like you didn’t feel like you needed to keep an eye on things.”

Lambert was so gods-damned _nosy_ , was the thing, and Geralt knew Lambert knew he and Eskel shared a bed sometimes, and he had a suspicion the guy paid way too much attention to it, but it wasn’t worth getting antsy about. Still, it was weird. “It’s a combination of things,” Geralt said, “but partly that I know that if she and hers wanted to hurt us, there wouldn’t be anything we could do about it anyway.” Which wasn’t it, at all, but how to explain-- he and Yennefer had parted on bad terms, sure, but Yennefer knew the score with Ciri, and she was one of the good guys, insofar as she was anything. 

“She was talking, in her room, last night,” Lambert said. 

“Don’t be a creep,” Geralt said, letting it come out as a growl.

“She was doing something that set off both my medallion and Coen’s,” Lambert said, not at all cowed. It was... a lot of years, since Lambert had really bothered to let Geralt scare him in the slightest. “We’d be idiots not to check that out.”

“Did she know you were there?” Geralt asked.

Lambert shook his head. “She was talking to someone she called Yennefer,” he said. “Using some kind of magical communicator. That’s what was setting off our medallions.”

Yennefer. Geralt controlled his facial expression, but he knew his pupils had moved and Lambert had seen it, because the other man made a wry, sort of nasty grin. “Triss said yesterday that Yennefer had asked her to come,” Geralt said calmly, “so it makes sense she’d check in.”

“Didn’t you and Yennefer have something going?” Lambert pressed. 

Geralt narrowed his eyes at him. “Yes and it ended badly,” he said. “But not so badly she’d want to hurt us for it. She knows what’s at stake with Ciri.” It was hard to keep steady eye contact, but he managed it.

Lambert’s expression didn’t soften at all. “You know we all have no choice but to trust you on this,” he said.

“I do know,” Geralt said. 


	5. Session

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning: I mention That Earworm early on this chapter so brace yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen i wrote _poetry_ for y'all, that kind of hurt

“You haven’t tried to take over the session one single time, Jaskier,” Marija said, and she sounded almost angry about it.

Jaskier looked up from where he’d been absently retuning the lute’s highest string, which was getting worn, he’d have to replace it tonight-- “Hm?”

“You haven’t taken over at all,” Marija said. “Haven’t so much as sung lead, haven’t made us workshop something new of yours, haven’t played any over-involved solos, haven’t sidebarred us into an irrelevant debate, haven’t regaled us with disturbingly lurid and inappropriate tales of your sexual exploits, haven’t done _anything_. You’re supposed to be a prima donna, why are you even here?”

Jaskier blinked. That was true. He’d been playing like he was hired backup on somebody else’s paid gig. Which was good session manners, but was not why he was included in the advanced performance workshop of the University’s bardic college. “Oh,” he said, “yes, you’re absolutely right. Should I throw an artistic tantrum? Harangue you all about my vision? I plain forgot what I was here for.”

“Are you running a temperature?” Dotlef asked waspishly, peering suspiciously over his recorder. “If you have some sort of contagion--”

“It’s just sexual frustration,” Allisande said. “He’s wasting away.”

“Mmm,” Jaskier said, “that _is_ actually my problem. Very keenly diagnosed, thank you Allisande.”

“Pining after someone’s mother?” Dotlef asked.

“Oh, no,” Jaskier said, “I broke up with your mother _years_ ago, she was _insatiable_ , Dotlef,” which made Dotlef put down the recorder and start to his feet, which meant Hestia had to shove her harp in between the two of them, and Jaskier gave Marija a little winking salute and she rolled her eyes. 

“Sit _down_ ,” she said to Dotlef, “my _gods_ , you _started_ it,” but she was smiling.

“No no,” Jaskier said, “I am pining because after twenty years I finally got that Witcher to kiss me, but now I think he’s dead or something and I will _never_ get him to plow me the way I have been trying for all these decades, and I’m just trying to work out how to make it a good ballad. Once I do, though, then it’s over for the rest of you, because it’s going to be really good.”

“I didn’t know you could _kiss_ a _Witcher_ ,” one of the students said, a bit dazed.

“Mmmm yes you can,” Jaskier said, and tipped his head back and played a little run on the lute, a riff off of the now-famous bit of _Toss A Coin_ (it had been famous enough for long enough that it was cliche, which was simultaneously depressing and thrilling, depending on the day). 

Allisande sang, in his lovely baritone, “Oh you can kiss a Witcher, if you’ve no sense of danger, you’ve no sense of danger, oh-oh-oh!” 

“No!” Marija shouted. “No _Toss A Coin_ , we have a rule!”

“And no monsterfucking,” Hestia said, “that’s rule two, no songs about monsterfucking.”

“A Witcher isn’t a monster,” Jaskier said, which was an old point of contention by now, “but I will abide by the first rule anyway, since I made the rule in the first place.” It was possible to get tired of one’s own cliche, it turned out. Anyway, Oxenfurt’s stately halls were not particularly in need of pro-Witcher propaganda anymore, after fifteen years of Jaskier’s intermittent residence. He hadn’t stopped playing the song, and now he modulated it into something else. 

_I came upon him finally, and close to death was he  
_ _I wept to see him in that state, his strength reduced to this;  
_ _He gave to me his silver knife, and bade me set him free  
_ _Between his ribs I plunged it fast, his bleeding mouth I kissed_

“That’s, ah,” Hestia said. “That sounds like monsterfucking.”

“Oh, yes, the knife’s a metaphor,” Allisande said. Then, hesitant, he added, “Surely?”

“I _wish_ it was a metaphor,” Jaskier said. “No, I stabbed him in the fucking chest, it was awful. I know I’m being flippant but this was genuinely traumatic for me.” He went on:

_In his tawny eyes the light went out, as he gazed up at me  
_ _The beast within him screamed and died, I gave the knife a twist  
_ _As his dying breath sighed from his lips he begged that I should flee  
_ _I sobbed and ran through deadly woods, a shape loomed from the mist--_

“So it’s a love song,” Allisande said. “Jaskier, I don’t know that we can workshop that one here.”

“Oh, you can’t,” Jaskier said. “That’s why I’ve been useless this whole session.” He couldn’t really tell the story in the song; if he was going with the version of events where he believed Geralt to be dead, to throw any spies off the scent, then of course he couldn’t explain any further. But the fragmentary tragic ballad had been a satisfactory exercise. 

Two of the students were whispering to one another (and a third had figured out what chords he was using and was playing backup, so she was his new favorite, ah but she had already been his favorite, she was in his lute lessons) and Jaskier caught _he makes it all up_ , and said “Mm, just like I make up your grades,” and transitioned into the chords for one of Marija’s favorites, _Love, Stay Thy Hand_ , beaming at his favorite student as she followed him easily. It was a lovely ballad, and was only filthy if you included the third verse, but most of the students didn’t get that it was dirty so you were generally safe either way.

The rest of the session passed with little incident; Jaskier only took one completely unnecessary solo so that Marija could instruct the students on how to handle such a situation, and then he pretended to be exhausted and made his favorite student fill in on some of the trickier lute parts, which were a stretch of her abilities but she faked it well in the parts where she couldn’t quite do it.

“You can’t rely on that,” Jaskier said, as they packed up their gear at the end of the session, “and I see what I’m going to have to ride you all about, but that’s a good use of survival skills.”

The Advanced Bardic Performance Workshop Session was held in an auditorium with public access, and a number of people usually stopped by to listen. Today was no exception, and a fairly normal smattering of people were in attendance-- people pausing on errands, that one old lady who liked to say embarrassing things to Jaskier, the creepy guy who leered at Marija and even Dotlef knew to run interference with, the lonely old man who never said anything, and the usual assortment of tourists and wanderers. 

One of them, a youngish dark-skinned man, approached him as he made to leave, and caught him gently by the arm. “Good sir,” he said, smiling brightly, “I am a very great fan of your poetry, and was wondering if I could ask you a question about one of the verses?”

Jaskier made himself smile pleasantly as he paused. Was this a come-on? Once, such a thing would have been welcome, but now he could only think, _who do you serve_? “Ah,” he said, “such discussions are often too heavy for a gray day like this.”

The young man’s eyes briefly changed color, from a normal deep brown to a lighter purple color, and the man gave him a serious look quite at odds with his smiling demeanor of a moment ago. “It is a heavy discussion I’d had in mind,” he said. 

A young woman came up next to the man, and said, very quietly and politely, “Excuse me, please don’t touch him.”

The man let go of Jaskier’s sleeve, and smiled at her. “Of course, my dear,” he said. Jaskier gave the young woman a look of alarm; he’d never seen her before, and she did not work for the university. 

“Please take a step back, Professor Pancratz,” the young woman said, still very quietly and calmly. “This person is magically disguised and may mean you harm.”

“Fuck,” Jaskier said, “it’s you, isn’t it,” and Yennefer grinned at him as the young man’s face melted away. 

“I don’t mean him any harm,” Yennefer said. “Good work-- Idara, was it?”

The young lady went slightly pale. “Milady,” she said nervously. 

“It’s all right,” Yennefer said. “I’m delighted. But I’m going to resume my disguise now,” and she was the young man again. Jaskier realized nobody else seemed to have noticed their altercation, and he went cold all over thinking of how vulnerable he was, in general. 

“Why don’t we have a chat,” Jaskier said lightly. 

He took her to one of the trendy cafes newly popular among the fashionable, and they sat in a booth in a back corner and Yennefer dropped her disguise after they got their trendy teas and cakes. “No one will be able to see me clearly or understand what we say to one another,” she said, “so rest easy, my friend.”

“Oh, I’m, I’m resting,” he said uneasily.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I presume you’re about to tell me something terrifying,” he said, “and I’m bracing myself for it.”

She got a strange expression on her face, and he realized in a moment it was _sympathy_. “No,” she said. “It’s actually-- I came to talk to you about nice things, for once.”

“Nice,” Jaskier said, completely nonplussed.

She held out her hand. She was holding a little crystal, and above it, an image appeared. It was Ciri, looking straight at Jaskier, but she looked as if she were a drawing, all in shades of black and white, with the lines of her white and the spaces in black. “I wanted to send a message,” she said. “Since I can’t send a letter.” It was like he was looking into a tiny room, and she was standing there, though he couldn’t really make out the background. She had her hair braided nicely, and was wearing unfamiliar clothes. Crucially, she looked healthy, less pinched than she had on the road, and her expression wasn’t frightened. She’d paused an instant, glancing at something Jaskier couldn’t see, but then she looked straight at him and continued.

“I won’t say where I am, because you already know. It’s nice here, and everyone’s, well. I mean, they’re not _nice_ , but. They’re Geralt’s family, and I like them. Uncle Vesemir is teaching me swordplay, and Eskel has been working with me on Signs, though I don’t know if I’ll be able to learn to cast them. And of course Geralt is teaching me all kinds of running and jumping skills, which eventually I’ll get to combine with the swordplay. Oh, there are a lot of books here, as well, and I’m learning about monsters and things. It’s better than I thought it would be, and I have my own room, though really I think it’s a closet of Geralt’s.” She paused. “Mm, I can’t remember what else I was going to say, but I wanted to find out if you were all right. I don’t know if you’ll get a chance to answer. It’s okay if you don’t. But I thought you might be worried about me, and Madame Merigold said I could record you a message, so I am.”

The image held for a moment, then turned fuzzy and disappeared, and Yennefer closed her hand around the crystal. 

Jaskier stared at the spot where it had been, and closed his eyes, seeing the ghost shape of where Ciri had been brighter than the tabletop. He opened his eyes again in a moment, surprised at how powerfully affected he was. “That was-- was that real?”

“There’s a magic-enabled distance-speaking tool called a megascope,” Yennefer said, “and if you and another person have one, you can use them to call upon one another at a distance. There’s a recording capability, as well. My friend Triss Merigold has one, and she has gone to your friend’s home, and Ciri clearly begged her for its use; I received that message in its entirety as a single packet, which I then recorded.” She nodded at the place where the image had been. “So that was really your friend, as of last night.”

 _Geralt’s family_ , Ciri had said. It was a powerful thought. Jaskier had never thought of it like that, had never considered-- he’d met Eskel before, once, briefly, and had picked up from Geralt’s rare mentions that the man was important to him somehow, but he’d thought of him as being, perhaps, a brother-in-arms, or maybe even a lover in the light of recent revelations about the sorts of things Geralt was interested in doing with not-just-women. 

He’d never really thought about Geralt being other than alone in the world. 

But most of his attention was taken up with how Ciri had looked-- healthy, comfortable, happy, well-fed and warm enough, her hair lovingly braided, her clothes clean and reasonably-well fitted to her, even if they were still boys’ clothes. No dirt on her face, no fear in her eyes. 

“She looked-- happy,” Jaskier said, finding it difficult to speak, for some reason.

“Triss has-- I asked her to look in on them,” Yennefer said quietly. “She’s been there a couple of days, and says that Ciri is doing very well. There are only five Witchers there, and the keep is… in bad shape, but enough of it is weathertight that they’re all comfortable enough, and they have decent supplies. She really does seem to be happy, all the adults are lovely to her, very invested in her welfare. And they’ve experience with children, though none recent.”

“Good,” Jaskier said. He should be uncomplicatedly happy about this but something in his belly felt-- hollow, lost maybe? He didn’t know. 

It was unworthy of him, though-- they didn’t need him, and were just fine without him, and that was that. He had no business being disappointed by that. And it wasn’t-- it wasn’t disappointment, but he really wasn’t sure what it was.

Well, they didn’t need him. But Ciri missed him enough to let him know she was fine, so that was a good consolation.

“I took a recording of you singing that verse of your new ballad,” Yennefer said. “The one about his tawny eyes. I thought Geralt would like that.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said, grimacing, “that’s not-- really a thing I meant to debut, yet, really.”

“The recording didn’t come out very well,” Yennefer said dismissively. “I meant to use it more as a kind of proof that you were alive, than anything else.”

Jaskier nodded, and hesitated, then said, “Could I-- send Ciri an answer?”

“Oh,” Yennefer said, “I suppose you could.” She frowned. “I don’t have another crystal to record it on. I’ll have to come back.”

“Great,” Jaskier said. “Now every time I talk to someone I’ll be squinting at them trying to decide if they’re really you or not.”

She laughed. “Next time I come to you I’ll come as myself, I promise.”

  
  


______

Geralt sat uneasily on the edge of a chair in Triss’s rooms. She’d appointed herself a suite, using her magic to make further minor repairs as necessary. It was cozy. He felt, somehow, endangered in it. Ciri liked it in here, though, and had earlier spent over an hour with Triss, just talking.  
(Geralt had stayed far enough down the hallway for plausible deniability. They had talked about what Triss had termed _girl stuff_ and it had mostly been innocuous. Some stuff about menstruation, which was generally good to know, and then mostly normal things like anyone would talk about, but apparently different because they were both female. After a while, Eskel had came and sat next to Geralt in the hall, shoulder pressed warm against his, and they’d sat silently listening for a bit until Eskel got up and left again. It had been nice, just to remember that he wasn’t alone with this.)

Triss was fiddling with some contraption she had on a trio of midsection-high stands, something magical that was currently inert. Geralt couldn’t get any kind of reading on it. He suspected it was the communicator she used to talk to Yennefer. She’d explained it when she’d had Ciri talk into one of the little crystals, earlier, but now Ciri had gone to her daily swordsmanship lesson, and Geralt was here to be shown something. 

“There we go,” Triss said, and Geralt’s medallion buzzed a warning as the thing flickered to life. He jumped, but controlled himself, and an image appeared, ghostly and illuminated in midair. It was blurry and hard to make out, but over a lot of background noise, Jaskier’s voice rose, distinctive and recognizable even as the image resolved into him sitting in a chair with his lute. 

“-- stabbed him in the fucking chest, it was awful,” Jaskier was saying. “I know I’m being flippant but this was genuinely traumatic for me.” He tipped his head back a little, and sang as he played, and it was clear enough to make out the words. 

_“In his tawny eyes the light went out, as he gazed up at me  
_ _The beast within him screamed and died, I gave the knife a twist  
_ _As his dying breath sighed from his lips he begged that I should flee  
_ _I sobbed and ran through deadly woods, a shape loomed from the mist-- “_

Geralt realized with some surprise that this had to be about him. Tawny eyes. All right, literally none of the details were correct, but it was recognizable. Nobody’d ever described his eyes as _tawny_ before. 

It sounded almost… appealing, that way.

Jaskier stopped singing and someone next to him said something indistinct, and then the image fuzzed out. 

Geralt blinked at the spot where it had been, then looked at Triss in puzzlement. “What,” he said. “How?”

“A megascope,” she said. “Yennefer has one. It can capture short events, in image and sound, so that they can be sent. I can call on hers with mine and we can talk directly.”

Geralt considered that. “Yennefer was watching Jaskier perform that,” he said. 

“Yes,” Triss said. 

“She’s… with him right now,” Geralt said. 

“Well, it was some hours ago,” Triss said, a tiny line appearing between her eyebrows. “But, yes, earlier today. Maybe it was yesterday.”

He scratched uneasily at the back of his head under his hair, finding that he had a stray tiny braid woven into the length of his hair that Ciri had to have put there when he wasn’t paying attention. “They’re not… friends,” he said. “It’s hard for me not to see this as… slightly threatening.”

“Yennefer spoke of the bard as a friend,” Triss said, looking slightly, hm, wounded, offended maybe. Not good. “From what she said to me, they seemed _quite_ close.”

“Hm,” Geralt said, feeling he was treading on shaky ground here. It wouldn’t do to offend a mage. Their loyalties tended to be, hm, strongly swayed by how much you annoyed them, he’d discovered. And there wasn’t much you could do, once one showed up, but go along with them and hope they lost interest before deciding to kill you. Which was precisely what he was hoping hadn’t happened to poor Jaskier.

“You don’t seem convinced,” Triss said. “What, you think Yennefer is sending you proof that she’s near this bard as a threat to you that she would somehow-- what, _hurt_ him?”

Geralt gritted his teeth, and said, “No,” but he could hear that it came out sounding false. If he was alienating Triss-- it was painful to think of himself and Yennefer as being opposing sides of a conflict, but there was no question Triss would be on Yennefer’s side, and if Yennefer’s “side” became something that was in any way in opposition to Geralt, that would be a problem.

“You _do_ ,” Triss said. Oh, she was offended, or something-- he couldn’t read her expression, but probably she was upset. Fuck. 

Well, nothing for it. “I care deeply for Yennefer but she is not careful with people,” Geralt said, “and I have been close friends with Jaskier for many years and know very well that he is not careful with himself. I don’t consider that an auspicious combination, is all, and given how they’ve interacted in the past, I don’t see it going well.”

“Hm,” Triss said, frowning, but she seemed less offended. She seemed to be fighting some inward battle, the contents of which he could barely guess at. “You’re… not wrong about Yennefer,” she conceded. “But the way she spoke of it, she was helping the bard record the events of the Battle of Sodden Field, not--” She hesitated. “Anything nefarious.” She cleared her throat, oddly.

“Mm,” Geralt said. 

“Do you want to record a message?” Triss asked. “I don’t know if Yennefer would want to talk to you, but she might be willing to either watch or pass on a message from you to her or to the bard.”

“No,” Geralt said, before he knew what he was going to say. He paused, and gave it a moment’s thought, and said, “I don’t think there’s anything I could say that would help. I would like to speak to either or both of them directly, but I don’t think there’s anything I could tell either of them that would be helpful.”

“Well,” Triss said. “I’ll ask her, but I’m not promising anything.”

  
  



	6. Tongue-Tie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: childhood medical trauma flashback, see end notes for more details if you expect this is a problem for you

_Tristina_ ,

Jaskier sat chewing on the end of his pen, staring at the letter. He’d read hers until he had it memorized. He’d never called her by that diminutive, not really, always so conscious of her pride, but she had called him Julek, and he’d never willingly answered to it for anyone but her, and it was _undoing_ him to think of it now. 

What could he even write back?

_I know your children’s names, and I know that your son loves to sing, because Hanna told me, and I was the one who sent her the little toy drum for him two winters ago, and I bought a little lute to send him but never did because I thought you’d take it away, can I send it now?_

No. He chewed the pen more, considering. 

_Can I come visit y_ no, he could not. He could not, they would be in danger if he did so. He couldn’t even send this directly to her, he had to send this to Hanna as if nothing had changed, and gods, _how_ had Tristina found out about Hanna? He was absolutely, rock-solid certain Hanna would never have betrayed him, but could she have been caught? After all this time? 

She’d been writing to him ever since the ill-fated abduction attempt before his father’s death. No, longer-- since they’d nabbed him after his sister’s wedding, or more properly since after he’d made his escape. She’d been his second choice, actually-- he’d gone for one of the guardsmen who’d been kind to him as a child, and had gotten a response that was so obviously dictated to the man by the Viscount that he’d only written back with false information after that, and only twice. Hanna had been a chambermaid of his mother’s who had adeptly navigated the change in management to become part of his sister’s household staff, and it was only by coincidence that he’d discovered she was still there and had managed to get a letter to her through an acquaintance. But she had now been a faithful correspondent for over ten years, and had never ever shown the slightest inclination to betray him, besides an occasional sentimental wish that he try his luck by showing up again. 

_If I were to come visit, would you shut the door in my face again?_ He almost wrote it, and snatched the pen away from the paper before he could give in to the impulse. That wasn’t fair; Mother had still been alive then, and may well have been the one behind it. 

He wanted, badly, to know if that were the case. But what he had now was so fragile, so slender an olive branch, he couldn’t bear to burden it with any of the weight of these years of pain.

He pulled over another sheet of paper, a scratch sheet this time with some assignment work or other on the back, and gnawed the pen a little more. It had the makings of a poem, though not likely one he’d ever publish. One of the personal ones instead, that lived in the little book under the mattress, that he’d told Nerio to burn if he ever didn’t come back. 

There was only about a 30% chance Nerio would try to sell it instead. Which was reasonable odds, so. Jaskier would be dead, he wouldn’t care. 

He scribbled some notes. _Do you remember_ , he wrote, and then made a bullet-pointed list of episodes he thought might be evocative, things he could conjure a crisp image of when he closed his eyes. 

_The kittens in the stable and what happened to them_

_The way my mother refused to be yours, do you know what that taught me? That she was only mine when it suited her_

_The letter you wrote about the old man staying a toad_

_The maid’s baby_

_The smuggled dumplings_

_Birgit at court and how she lied for us_

He sat for a while with his face in his hands, letting some of those old images wash through him. They’d grown apart, starting once he went to the temple school, and irrevocably since he escaped to university. He pushed away the images of _that,_ of those wretched years at the temple, that wanted to come into his mind; no, he wasn’t thinking about that now, he wasn’t. It wasn’t worth remembering. He’d mined it for images once and had found it satisfying to excoriate it in poetry, and he wasn’t about to dredge up how it made him _feel_. 

He yanked the first sheet of paper back over to him and wrote, 

_I have written so many letters to you, in my mind, over the years, that now I find I have no words left.  
_ _I wrote that poem for you, and I thought you might know it. I assume it sent Mother into fits, if she grasped any of it.  
_ _I assume you let that vicious bitch die alone. I hope you did._

He almost went back and crossed that line out, but made himself leave it. 

_I miss you. You’re right, I haven’t stayed free, but I have stayed_ myself _, which was more than I thought I’d get.  
_ _I hope what I left you was enough. I had hoped it would be a space you could grow to fill, and not feel as constrained by as I would have. I am sorry if it wasn’t what you wanted, but then, I didn’t know what you wanted, and all I could do was hope. I didn’t do it for you, but I didn’t_ not _do it for you either._

 _I love you,_ _  
_ _Julek_

He folded and sealed the note before he could think better of it. The enclosing letter, for Hanna, would have to wait until he could regain his composure. He went to his armoire and pulled out a bottle of wine and started drinking as he went back to the page with the poem scraps. 

He’d gotten some themes, a few really vibrant images, and about half a stanza down when there was a gentle rapping at his door. “Fuck,” he said, as his concentration snapped and the image he’d been contemplating shattered into little bits. No, no, he’d come up with another. It was fine. He stuck the pen back in its holder and wandered over to the door, limping as he realized he’d been sitting funny and couldn’t feel one of his legs. 

Ooh, and he’d also had rather more of the wine than he’d thought. Mm he was a little light-headed. _Not wise, Julek_ , he thought to himself, and the old name was like a stinging slap in his mind that he had to shake off. Cautiously, he opened the door a crack and peered out. 

“Fucking Yennefer of fucking Vengeberg,” he said mildly, in some surprise. 

“Is that what you call me now?” she said, amused.

“It’s what I’ve always called you in my head,” he said, taking his shoulder away from the door so it could open. “I just don’t usually say it aloud. I’ve had rather a bit of wine and I’m quite emotionally vulnerable, as it happens, so if you were planning on finishing me off now’s the time.”

She swept in the door, carrying a largeish bag on her back with some sticks or rods or something poking out of it. “I wasn’t, actually,” she said, “but if you want me to, I’ve some time to spare. Is there any wine left?”

“Oh, certainly,” he said, closing the door behind her. He latched it securely, as was his habit now, then went over and dug around to find a cup. “Er. Might have to swig straight from the bottle.”

“I’m not fussed,” she said, and made her unerring way over and picked it up to do just that.

She was dressed exquisitely but less ostentatiously than usual, perhaps-- black on black brocade, severe high neck on her dress but the collar framed her face dramatically, and her hair was in soft loose curls. She took a hefty swig from the bottle, put it down on his desk, and then regarded the papers on his desk with keen interest. “Ooh,” she said, “what are you working on?”

“A poem,” he said, a little crossly. “Don’t-- don’t poke through that, it’s just my notes.”

“It almost looks like you’re working out a spell,” she said, ignoring him to literally poke at the paper. “S _he… was only mine… when it suited her_ ,” she read. “Mm, a heartbreak poem? Best kind.”

“Please don’t,” he said, and came over and took the piece of paper away from her. 

She glanced up at him, innocently wounded. “Don’t you publish these?” she said. 

“Only some of them,” he said, “and when they’re _finished_ , Yennefer.”

“Hm,” she said, and walked around to the armoire. She took the bag off her shoulder and set it so it leaned against the side of the armoire. He was not going to ask what was in it, though it was large and rather clunky. “I don’t think I understand art,” she said, turning to look at him with her head cocked slightly. 

He rubbed his face with one hand, realizing he needed to shave. Well, tomorrow. He picked up the bottle of wine from the desk and went and sat on the bed, since it was the only other piece of furniture in the room besides the desk and chair, and it seemed gentlemanly to leave the chair for the visitor to sit in. After taking a deep swig from the bottle, he composed himself, looked at the little scrap of poetry notes [ _how much nicer the front of the house always was than the back/ bruises under brocade, chin up to hide the cracks_ ], and said, “I shouldn’t think you have much need of art, Yennefer.”

She was still prowling around the room, and paused, cocking her head again. “Why not?” she asked.

“Art is something we make to help us feel we have some control over things we feel but don’t entirely always understand,” Jaskier said. “It’s a way to say the unsayable and make sense of concepts too large to hold in one mind. But it’s also just a way to feel control over something that can’t be controlled.”

She held her hand out, and he passed her the bottle. “ _What_ about my current state,” she said, and then paused to take a swig from the bottle and swallow it and then apparently stand there a moment doing nothing, “leads you to believe that I have no need of feeling in control of things?”

“You _do_ control things,” he said. “That’s what you do. You have power and you make things happen for you and you see something that you want and you batter the world down until you get it.”

“Do I?” she asked, staring at him. 

“Just because you haven’t yet succeeded at whatever you’re trying to get doesn’t mean you aren’t going to,” Jaskier said, and held his hand out for the bottle. “You have a lot more recourse than sitting around trying to write poems about how it made you feel in a vain attempt to come to terms with things you couldn’t possibly have done anything about but are wracked with guilt over anyway.”

She handed the bottle over slowly, as if reluctant. She was still standing in the middle of his floor, not sitting in the seat he’d vacated for her. He had no shoes on, and no jacket, and was in old ill-fitting trousers and a very plain and somewhat ratty shirt with a shapeless unbelted robe over the top. “You could have had a lot more power in your life than you do,” she said. “You’re not entirely powerless, but you could be less powerless than you are.” She paused. “More powerful.” She frowned. 

“I know what you mean,” he said. “Yes, Yennefer, I could have been more powerful than I am. But all power has a cost. Someone told me that holds true for magic. Who-- it was _Geralt_ who told me that,” and he snapped his fingers, “and he was talking about those awful potions he takes but I know he meant, in general. All magic has a cost. All _power_ has a cost. And the cost, in this case, would have been literally everything about myself that makes me tolerable to myself.”

“I was going to ask what Geralt knows about magic,” Yennefer said, wrinkling his nose. “Those potions he takes _are_ awful.”

“They make him sick,” Jaskier said. “Anyway, he wasn’t wrong, and I think he was being specific but I’ve come to understand it generally. All power costs.” He paused to drink from the bottle. He should stop; he was on the verge of belligerence with an all-powerful mage, who was standing in his bedroom with her arms crossed and her expression progressively less amused. 

But he’d done stupider things, and hadn’t died yet and when his time came he could only die once, so. Melitele knew, he’d irritated this particular mage often enough that when she finally snapped and killed him he’d richly deserve it, so why stop now? 

“All magic _does_ cost,” Yennefer said, agreeing. “And all power costs, you’re not wrong. But _not_ having power costs as well, when the time comes.”

“Yes,” Jaskier said. “Everything has costs. But if you’re lucky you can afford the things you want. I wanted to exist as myself more than I wanted to occupy a petty hereditary government office that would have perhaps given me the power to order around a handful of people and fight constantly for my entire life at court, at the cost of literally anything I enjoy in my life. So I exist as myself, and the bill hasn’t come due yet, and when it does I hope I feel it was worth it.” He waved the piece of paper. “In the meantime I make art to try and make myself feel like I’m in control of it. That’s how it works.”

Yennefer stepped toward him, and then climbed up to sit at the foot of the bed, which wasn’t what he had expected her to do at all. She sat regally at first, gathering her skirts into a comfortable and dignified position, but then she slumped over a little. “Does it help?” she asked.

It was so incongruous that he laughed. “I don’t know,” he confessed, “I’ve never really made a serious go of _not_ doing it. I don’t think I _can_ not do it, do you understand? So I do it whether it helps or not.”

“What about the songs?” she asked, after a moment. 

He handed her the bottle. “I can’t help writing those either,” he said. 

“I’m in one,” she said, sounding-- not angry but satisfied. 

“You are,” he said. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you’re pleased that it’s about your destructive power rather than something nice.”

“I’m not nice,” she said. “If someone made art about me I wouldn’t want it to be a lie.” She was investigating the ceramic wine bottle as if it held some sort of secret in the incised decoration around the shoulder of it. He watched her look at it, and in a moment she looked up and caught him in her gaze, holding him as if with a pin. “I’ve had songs written about me before that were lies,” she said. “I didn’t like them.”

He swallowed, finding it difficult, and said softly, “I won’t lie about you, lady.”

She reached out and caught his face, closer to him than he’d realized, and leaned in and kissed his mouth. She tasted like wine, unsurprisingly. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth to her; she could have whatever she wanted of him. It would be a welcome change from what he’d been feeling before. 

That was maybe the dirty truth nobody understood about poetry-- he went out on the road every summer not really because he needed more material but because when he had too much quiet and solitude to write poetry in, he dug far far too deep for it and risked bleeding himself dry or drowning himself in it. Everyone figured he’d get himself killed on his madcap troubadour adventures, and he knew that the truth was that if he didn’t go on them, he’d drown himself at his desk. He’d figured it out by accident, pretty early on, and had been resolute in his course ever since. 

Yennefer climbed into his lap, her heavy brocade skirts cascading around him, and he put his arms around her narrow waist, her small frame, and breathed the scent of her-- expensive perfume, floral and fruity but developed to something complicated and dark as it mingled with the warmth of her body down her throat, under that high neckline, between her breasts.

But in a moment she paused, tipped her head back, took a deep breath and said, “I really didn’t come here to do this.”

He looked up at her, shaking his hair out of his eyes-- it was over-long, he’d been neglecting his grooming, collapsing into the trope of the shabby middle-aged academic who spent far too much time thinking about his own feelings-- and said, “I didn’t really expect that you had but I’m always willing to roll with things.”

“I know you are,” she said. Her pelvis was still nice and snug against his waist, a pleasant substantial weight in his lap against the slowly-awakening pressure of arousal low in his gut, and lower still of course. She caressed his cheek absently, frowning at the brush of stubble against her thumb. Since he’d become old enough to find the local population of students distastefully young as potential bedfellows, he’d grown a great deal less interested in expending the effort to find playmates, so he hadn’t touched anyone since her last visit. He wondered if she’d like to know that, or would find it pathetic. Not like it had been that long. 

“Among my few virtues,” he said, and turned to capture her thumb with his mouth. She let him bite it gently, amusement lightening some of the darkness of her expression. In a moment she freed her thumb, tracing it across his lower lip. 

“I did come here for a purpose,” she said. “But you are very tempting, my dear.”

“I try,” he said, flattered. 

She hooked her thumb over his lower lip, catching his teeth too, holding his mouth open. “You had your own transformation here,” she murmured, musing, pushing his tongue up a little with the top of her thumb and caressing the scar underneath where they’d cut his tongue-tie to let him pronounce his Rs, thirty-four years ago, which he’d mostly managed to forget but sometimes when he was thinking about something else entirely the pain and the blood and the terror would come back to him. He closed his teeth convulsively on her thumb but pried his mouth back open with an effort, tears starting to his eyes at the unexpected shock of the memory. 

He hadn’t known there was a scar. 

“They did worse to me,” she murmured, “but I consented to it, with open eyes, knowing the cost.” She shook her head slightly. “You didn’t consent, did you.”

He didn’t shake his head, but his jaw trembled with the strain of not biting down again. No, he hadn’t consented, he’d been seven years old, but they’d already done worse to him to try to beat the speech impediment out. Higher nobles could be idiosyncratic, but at their relatively low level in the complex hierarchy there was no room for foibles, no room for sweet childish lisps past the age of literacy. He had to be perfect, had to look perfect, had to sound perfect, had to act perfect. Had to keep his mouth closed except for perfect sounds. It was a mercy, really, that the third speech tutor had diagnosed the tongue-tie and had a practical solution to it, regardless of what it had entailed, because it had _worked_ , eventually, once little Julian could be convinced to speak again at all.

Finally, he managed to whisper, “Don’t,” around her thumb, and she pulled it slowly out of his mouth. He clenched his teeth, then, because he could, and she curled her fingers around his cheek as he looked away, and pulled his head against her breast. 

“I didn’t come here to torture you, either,” she said softly. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“You can’t help it,” he whispered shakily into her exquisite brocade. 

“They had to reshape my whole spine,” Yennefer whispered to him. “My face. I was all crooked.”

“How old were you?” Jaskier whispered back.

She shook her head. “Grown,” she said, “it doesn’t matter, I’m not talking about this any more than I have. But.”

It was an apology, he realized. He ran his hand up her back, her straight back, between her narrow, even shoulders, and raised his head to look at her. She took his hand in hers and put it on her jaw, tracing his fingers along a line. There was nothing to feel, but he could understand that she was showing him where she’d been changed. Her eyes were solemn. “Did it work?” he asked. “Did it get you what you wanted?”

“I wasn’t broken,” she said. “I would have been fine staying that way. But I thought I couldn’t get what I wanted without changing. So I did.” She quirked an eyebrow, shrugged. “How far would you have gone as a bard, with your tongue literally tied?”

“I just wanted to be me,” Jaskier said. “I just wanted to be a person.”

She pushed his hair back gently, then pushed herself back and away from him. She really was physically very small, very slight, which was funny because in his memory she was the size of Geralt atop him and inside him, so it was jarring to him to realize that he could probably easily lift her in his arms. 

“But I didn’t come here to break into your mind,” she said, “tempting as it is, _or_ to fuck you, tempting as _that_ is.” She went over to the bag she’d brought and pulled out the sticks, and began setting them up. They were tripods, like one would have a telescope mounted upon, or a sextant. She set them in a triangle in the scant floor space at the foot of his bed and to either side, and then rummaged in the bag for a square wooden case that she then set on the foot of the bed.

“Uh,” he said, deciding not to offer assistance. “What is all this?”

“We’re going to call on a friend of mine,” Yennefer said. “Using this magic-enabled device.” She lifted a crystal thing out of the box and fitted it into the top of one of the tripods, and did the same with two more, adjusting them carefully by eye. 

“What, er,” Jaskier said, “is, er…”

“Remember the thing I showed you, the talking image of Ciri?” Yennefer said. “This is the megascope.”

“The distance communicator,” he said, lighting up with interest.

“Just so,” Yennefer said. 

“Fuck,” he said, “I look terrible, who’s this person we’re talking to?”

“Just change your jacket, it’ll be fine,” Yennefer said. “We’re going to call on my friend Triss Merigold, remember she’s visiting our mutual friend?”

He had slid off the side of the bed to rummage for a decent shirt, and shook his head. Yennefer tilted her head slightly to watch him, and he laughed at her and pulled his shirt off, discarding it carelessly and posing for a moment with a coy twist of his hips before he pulled the nicer shirt on over his head and dove back into the armoire for a decent jacket. 

“Our mutual friend,” he said indistinctly, not really paying attention. 

He’d lost weight, he realized absently. Well, he often did over the winters-- he gained muscle during the summers, but he also ate more heartily. He was thin at the moment, bony and scrawny. But a decent jacket did the work of making him look reasonable, and he scrubbed his fingers through his hair to get it to lie somewhat correctly and not look lank, and then crawled back up onto the bed, aware that his trousers didn’t match the jacket at all and probably he looked ridiculous. Still. He wriggled to settle the shoulders properly, but decided not to do up the fasteners. 

“Oh, nicely done,” Yennefer said. “Anyway, yes, Geralt apparently thinks I’m holding you hostage and wanted to talk to us, so he’s waiting for us now.”

A blurry bright image appeared, and Jaskier said, “Wait, what? Fuck!” as the image resolved into a white-on-black representation of a young-looking woman in a lovely, fur-lined dress, peering with some interest at them.

“Come up here, Jaskier,” Yennefer said, patting the bed next to her, and he obligingly crawled forward and sat next to her, close enough that she could put her arm around him, though she didn’t. “Good evening, Triss! Am I early, or late?”

Another figure burst into the frame, short and pale and skinny, and shouted, “Late!” 

“Ciri,” Jaskier said, not meaning to speak, but it was like it was torn out of him.

“Jaskier,” she said, and started forward, reaching for something. The image of him that she was looking at, he realized. 

“You can’t touch it,” Triss said, gently urgent. Ciri subsided, staring fixedly at a point that must, to her, be Jaskier’s face. He realized he was doing the same. 

“Hey, kid,” he said, finding it hard to get the words out. Oh, gods, it was even harder to look at her, with all the thinking he’d been doing about his sister, about their childhood, about all of it-- and fuck, he was drunk enough that it was going to be difficult to bottle all that shit back up. 

“You look-- sad,” Ciri said. “Are you all right?”

For a horrible moment Jaskier thought he might burst into tears, but with a heroic effort of will he crammed it all back down behind his ribs and laughed. “Oh Ciri!” he said. “No, I’m not sad, I wasn’t-- I didn’t know how this thing worked and I did not expect to see you!” Frantic deflection did wonders at rerouting mis-aimed conversations, he’d discovered. “What an amazing thing. Oh my-- but you must tell me, how are you? 

“Did you get the message I sent you before?” Ciri asked. 

“Yes,” Jaskier said, “yes, I did. I had trouble believing it was real, but now I can see that you’re real.”

“Then you know I’m fine!” she said. “I told you already all about it! But you didn’t send an answer.”

“I didn’t have my megascope with me,” Yennefer interjected. “I wasn’t prepared to record a reply from him. That’s why I brought everything to do it tonight instead.” Ciri refocused on her, and Yennefer smiled. “Hello, by the way, Cirilla. It’s good to see you in calmer circumstances.”

“Hello, Yennefer,” Ciri said, and made a perfect little curtsey, in her boys’ clothes. Then she looked back to Jaskier. “But are you all right? That was what I wanted to know, and you looked so sad a moment ago.”

“I am all right,” Jaskier said. “I’m not sad, I’m fine. This is my regular job, I’ve worked here fifteen years now, in the winters. But I miss you.” He hesitated to ask it, but made himself continue, “Is Geralt all right? Has he reverted to a feral state? I mean, what are Witchers like when they all get together, do they talk a lot or just communicate in grunts?”

It was working, Ciri was laughing. “He’s fine,” she said. “He’s right here.” She gestured, and frowned at someone out of range of the device. 

Triss stepped away and abruptly vanished, and then another figure stepped in, and resolved itself into--

Geralt, white outlines of black shapes, his eyes somehow even more uncanny in a shade of silver-black with white slit pupils. He looked from Jaskier to Yennefer, then tilted his head, giving Yennefer a long, serious look. 

“Hi, Geralt,” Jaskier said, feeling invisible. 

Geralt finished his study of Yennefer and then looked at him, expression unreadable. “Jaskier,” he said. He looked back at Yennefer again. “Yennefer.”

“Yes, it’s us,” Yennefer said. 

“Where are you?” Geralt asked. Jaskier couldn’t puzzle out his expression until it struck him that this was sometimes the kind of keenly-attentive aspect Geralt wore when he was trying to puzzle out a situation on a monster hunt. This was Geralt’s trying-to-figure-shit-out face. 

“We’re in Oxenfurt,” Yennefer said.

“In my-- bed, actually,” Jaskier said, patting the edge of the mattress. “I don’t-- my room here isn’t very large, I don’t go in for the deluxe accommodations lest I get too soft to appreciate the sort of lodgings one gets on the road.” He was still deciphering just what was going on with Geralt’s body language.

Geralt looked good, was the thing-- he was wearing comfortable-looking clothes, a quilted coat of nice make, knee-length, no visible weapons anywhere, and his hair was braided nicely in a much fancier style than Jaskier had ever seen it done in before, and he’d put back on some of the weight he’d lost so he wasn’t gaunt anymore. He was still looking back and forth between Yennefer and Jaskier as if he was going to find something-- horrifying, maybe? Like what? What did he think was going on? Did he think Yennefer had Jaskier hostage? Is that what she’d said, earlier? Jaskier hadn’t really been paying attention. 

“I do want to come to Oxenfurt someday,” Ciri said. “But I think I need to get better at swordplay first. And Geralt’s been teaching me footwork-- I don’t know how to describe it, but I’m learning to balance really well, and jump and things like that. It’s really fun. So I have to finish learning that, I think, here, before I go anywhere else-- but I miss you, Jaskier, and I want to come see you!”

“I want that too,” Jaskier said, “but I understand, and I think given your likely lifestyle it’ll be really useful if you know how to do, er, all that stuff.” He was so distracted by Geralt that he had to make a real effort to focus on Ciri and finish his sentence. “Someday, though, you can come here and my friends will teach you higher math and you’ll become undefeatable.”

“I’m not so sure about math,” Ciri said, frowning.

“Oh,” Geralt said, suddenly paying attention, “no, that would be good. Probably they could teach you history too, it turns out that living through it as a social outcast doesn’t really give you the perspective you need to explain it to someone else.” 

“But first,” Ciri said, “swords,” and Geralt actually cracked a smile. 

“Yes,” he said, “swords.” He glanced up at Yennefer. “And maybe some mage stuff, Triss seems hopeful on that.”

“Really,” Jaskier said, also looking at Yennefer. 

She quirked an eyebrow at him, which he couldn’t quite follow-- she was trying to convey something to him. Hm, probably she’d noticed Geralt’s strange intentness as well. Suspicion, was what it was, Geralt was suspicious. 

Did Geralt know that Yennefer had fucked Jaskier? He was suddenly cold, considering it. She might have done the whole thing just to upset Geralt, might be planning to use it to hurt him-- might already have done so-- except that Jaskier didn’t think Geralt and Yennefer had talked directly, at all, in all of this. Which meant she hadn’t, yet, and still might.

Oh, dear, this wasn’t a conversation they could have with Ciri standing right there beaming at them in delight about all of it. Oh, no. He turned and smiled at Ciri.

“Well, won’t that be fun,” he said. “Then you can terrify me in all of the ways at once.”

“I would _protect_ you,” Ciri said. “Don’t be silly, Jaskier, you’re my mother now, remember?”

Despite himself he laughed, almost painfully. “I do,” he said. Nobody had ever cast him in a parental role of any kind, ever-- and, thanks very much, he’d never so much as had a credible pregnancy scare in any of his partners, he was _very_ careful about that sort of thing. He had very thoroughly made sure he had nothing to inherit, and to then bring a child into the world with nothing to give it was rather stupid, but. Well, there was that letter now, more or less claiming Ciri as his bastard; he’d given a statement about it to Nerio to be opened in the event of his death, and well, then his sister’s estate was going to have a great time fighting that out. Hopefully it wouldn’t come up, but if it did, at least it could muddy the waters on this missing hunted child.

But he was a mom now, so there was that. Could he write of it to his sister? No, but it would be fun to tell her just to see her face. Which he hadn’t seen in years. Oh, he was a _mess_. This wasn’t going well.

“You look sad again,” Ciri said, far too astute. 

“I wish I could be in your life,” he said, too tired and drunk not to be devastatingly honest. “I wish I could be there now. But I have too much to do here, and you don’t need me there.” He was maybe talking to Geralt too. Great. “I’ll wait. It’s never been my strong suit, and I can’t say I’ll wait patiently or faithfully, but I’ll wait. Whenever you need me, I’ll be here.”

He looked at Geralt, who from his expression absolutely did not understand that Jaskier was also talking to him, and just nodded solemnly, mostly looking at Ciri too. 

Yennefer shifted her weight slightly, pressing her shoulder against his. He glanced over at her in some surprise, and she gave him an unexpectedly sincere look of sympathy. “We’ll figure something out,” she said. 

Jaskier smiled at her; it was a nice sentiment to express, and unexpected, though not entirely out of line with the conversation they’d been having earlier. “I suppose,” he said. 

“I just have to keep you alive long enough for it all to work out,” she said, sounding almost fond.

“It is a bit of an undertaking, keeping me alive,” Jaskier said, and looked at Geralt. “Though I like to think I’m a little less bad at staying alive than I was in my youth.”

Geralt’s expression had gone strangely blank, but that got him to blink and say, “I hope so, you were terrible at it.”

“And yet,” Jaskier said, brighter, “somehow, I managed to go all this time without anyone killing me even once!”

“Not even once,” Geralt agreed faintly, eyebrows up. He looked mystified. Or alarmed? 

“Why would Jaskier die?” Ciri asked, concerned.

Jaskier and Yennefer both looked at Geralt, who sighed, and said to Ciri, “Nilfgaard is hunting for you, as we thought, and Yennefer has been keeping them from finding Jaskier either. They know you’re with me, and they know he knows me, so they’re going to want to ask him where I am. And… they wouldn’t ask him nicely and take no for an answer.”

“Then he should come here, where we can protect him,” Ciri said. “That would be perfect!”

Jaskier rubbed his chest, because that hurt with how sweet it was. “Yes,” he said, “but no, Ciri, my life is here and I’m not ready to give up my entire life yet. Anyway if I give up my teaching position then how am I supposed to use nepotism to get you in? Staff get a family discount, you know, and it’s nothing to sneeze at, tuition here is quite steep.”

“Oh,” Ciri said. She looked at Geralt. “I, um. I probably need to learn about money, too.”

Oh, _that_ hit hard: Jaskier’s first sincere attempt to run away from home had been when he was just a little younger than Ciri, and he hadn’t really understood what money actually meant and had doomed his entire escape by inadequate attention to finances and provisioning. He cringed. “It _is_ important,” he said. 

“Witchers know about coin,” Geralt said. “I can handle that much math.” 

“But first,” Jaskier said, “swords,” and Ciri laughed in delight, and he made himself smile brightly back at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> specific notes on TW: Yennefer uncovers a buried childhood memory of Jaskier undergoing oral surgery without anaesthetic to correct a tongue-tie. It is intentionally very abrupt and jarring, and occurs in this paragraph:  
>  _“I try,” he said, flattered._  
>  _She hooked her thumb over his lower lip,_  
>  For vivid details, skip that paragraph; the next little bit has him processing the surrounding trauma and is potentially upsetting as well but not as vivid. But I figure, a warning so you can brace yourself would at least help. FWIW there's no memory of doctors or medical setting, he's just remembering the experience and, mostly, the pain and helplessness. 
> 
> The subject matter is mostly ended at the paragraph that begins  
>  _Finally, he managed to whisper, "Don't,"_ ,  
> and then they deal with it, somewhat.
> 
> Take care of yourselves, loves.


	7. Entangling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rating bump: Yennefer and Jaskier are at it again. Probably really Mature instead of Explicit but I'm hedging my bets here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: discussion of past suicidal ideation/self-harming impulses (Yen's wrist scars and Jaskier's Feral Disaster behavior)

It took longer than Yennefer had thought to disentangle them from the conversation and sign off. She hadn’t seen a graceful way to scrape the child out of the way to speak frankly with Geralt, so instead she’d done all she could to show how comfortable Jaskier was with her. He’d obliged without appearing to catch on, leaning into her touch and making expressive faces and contributing animatedly to the conversation, but she knew she wasn’t imagining that there was a bruised sort of quality to him that must be communicating itself to Geralt, who after all knew him very well.

But she also knew that if she had genuinely had Jaskier under any sort of duress, he would absolutely not have been able to resist attempting to send some kind of coded message, probably crudely with winks or mouthing or somesuch, to Geralt, who would have been looking for just so clumsy a thing, and the fact that he hadn’t even apparently attempted to deploy significant eye contact had to count for something.

It didn’t help that he looked awful, though. Not-- not that he didn’t look attractive, but that he looked generally worn-down and tired and poorly-groomed, not at all as she’d been accustomed to seeing him before. And he just-- he _felt_ bruised all over, emotionally. He’d been in the midst of something quite wrenching when she’d appeared at the door, but she hadn’t been able to get a good handle on it.

He didn’t always think verbally, or not clearly so anyway. Yennefer had learned to read minds fairly early in her magical career, and thus had become something of a connoisseur of thoughts, over the decades. Some people thought in very clear sentences, as if they were speaking out loud. Some people thought in vaguer sort of concepts, but still words. Some used almost no words, and thought in images, or unformed concepts. The more verbal a thinker someone was, the easier it generally was to get a handle on what they were really thinking; nonverbal thinkers tended to crystallize their idioms around things understood only by themselves, symbols and images that had significance only in the context of their life experiences, and so it didn’t matter how thoroughly you plumbed the depths of their minds, they’d still be opaque to you.

Jaskier normally thought in sentences, though sometimes they were garbled and did not connect to one another. He also tended to have fairly clear emotions, though they were often so strongly divorced from his surface aspect that it was jarring. (He was very, very, _very_ good at pretending to be politely neutral or even pleasantly diverted by something while inwardly being utterly consumed by something else, which she knew literally no one expected of him, not even people who seemed to know him well.) But sometimes, and she’d gathered that it was when he was composing poetry or songs, he tended to have wildly disorganized thoughts that had little bearing on anything she could understand but tended to group strongly together along otherwise unexpected axes. So she hadn’t been surprised to find he’d been working on poetry, but she had been disconcerted by how little of it she could puzzle out.

She had lightly paid attention to him furiously trying to work out what Geralt was suspicious of, throughout the conversation. He’d reached the right conclusion, she thought, but hadn’t let himself think it concretely, so she still wasn’t sure. 

As the last light sparkled away from the megascope, Jaskier sighed and slouched over on the bed. “She’s so fucking cute,” he said, sounding miserable. “God. So much cuter than I was.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Yennefer said charitably. “You must have been an adorable child.”

“Oh ho,” Jaskier said, and took off his jacket, tossing it with practiced ease back into the armoire. “No. Well, as a little kid, yeah, but by Ciri’s age? Oh, I had the _worst_ awkward phase. I was alternately all limb and all torso, nothing fit me, I outgrew shoes within minutes, my skin got terrible, my hair was a disaster, my _skin_ was _worse_ \-- it was all just a terrible mess for longer than I care to admit.”

Yennefer thought briefly of her own awkward phase, which had been, well, worse than that, and dismissed it, stepping into Jaskier’s space to catch him by the chin. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I won’t.” 

He was looking down, but flicked his eyes up to look directly into her face after a moment. He really was very pretty, pale eyes and dark lashes, and he ran his tongue over his lower lip distractingly before saying, “Are you trying to use me to hurt Geralt? Because I told you I wouldn’t do it.”

Yennefer felt her eyebrows go up and her fingers tighten on his chin a little-- she hadn’t felt this coming-- but she smiled. Reflex made her say, “As if you could stop me,” but she immediately realized she didn’t want that, didn’t want him resistant-- didn’t want to have to hurt him. His jaw went tight under her hand, and she let go and said, “But I don’t want that either, Jaskier. I don’t want to confuse things _more_ than they already are. I don’t _know_ if I have any genuine feelings for him. Waging war against him using you as the weapon isn’t going to help me sort that out.”

“He thinks you’re holding me hostage or something, doesn’t he,” Jaskier said. 

Yennefer rolled her eyes a little. “More or less,” she said. “He told Triss, and I am quoting, that while he cares deeply for me, I am not careful with people, and you are not careful with yourself, so he assumes I must be hurting you.”

“Not _careful_ with myself,” Jaskier said, and she watched him figure out that Geralt was right. 

“Isn’t it great when he’s condescending?” she said lightly. 

Jaskier set his jaw. “He is _one hundred years old_ ,” he said, “and so out of touch with his own feelings--” He stopped, and sighed harshly. “I probably deserve that judgement but considering the source, that is pretty fucking rich.”

“I suppose it answers my questions about how _he_ feels about _me_ ,” Yennefer said lightly. 

“I don’t know that it’s a fair sign of that,” Jaskier hedged. 

“But you don’t know,” she said.

He sighed again, softer. “I don’t,” he said. “Yennefer, we need to talk to him about it. He’s not wrong to worry; you and I weren’t friends, last he knew. Does he know--” He hesitated. “Does he know about--”

“I don’t think so.” Yennefer crossed her arms over her chest, pulling herself in a little; she’d been sort of leaning in toward Jaskier, and, well, they _weren’t_ friends. She knew him better, now, than he knew her, and he didn’t know how well she knew him. She was quite sure he didn’t realize what the ring really was for. She should tell him, it felt dishonest now. “I did tell Triss,” she admitted. “She knows, but I don’t think she’d feel she could tell him.”

“We need to talk to him,” Jaskier said. “I’m angry, but being angry won’t fix anything.”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” she said, slightly surprised at herself. But she didn’t. “He’s an asshole.”

“So am I,” Jaskier said. 

She could _feel_ him about to say it. “Don’t,” she said. “I know. So am I.” She sighed. Maybe it was contagious; now _she_ felt all bruised, emotionally. 

Jaskier grinned. “You are,” he said, but there was a sweetness to the angle of his mouth, and a knowing sort of pain in his eyes. “Hey, do you want to stick around?”

Yennefer looked at him, thinking it over. “What, do you just want me to hold you?”

He tilted his head a little, chewing on that lip of his. “Maybe?” he said. 

“Do you want me to horribly take advantage of you?” she asked, loosening her crossed arms slightly. “Confirm Geralt’s worst fears about the horrible things I’ll do to you?”

He gave her a soft, sad smile, but it shaded toward wickedness. “I’m not going to lie,” he said, “there’s a part of me that _wants_ you to hurt me, I should be honest about that.”

“I know,” she said. She uncrossed her arms and stepped in, taking his hands in hers. “I guess I should be honest too. When I gave you this ring I figured you’d leave it on the nightstand or throw it in a drawer or something. I made it powerful enough that I’d still know if something happened to you at that distance. So with you wearing it, I can more or less keep immediate tabs on you whenever I pay attention to it.”

“Can it read my mind?” Jaskier asked, looking-- more intrigued than upset, actually. 

“Not… exactly,” she said, “but-- I mean, I intended it to alert me if you got abducted, so it reacts to your emotions.”

“Oh,” he said, and that was harder to read, but she thought he was still interested, maybe.

She rolled the ring around his finger with her fingertips, feeling how it resonated with her. It wasn’t meant for two-way communication at all, but it vibrated a little at her touch. “So I’ve been spying on you,” she said, “and I had intended to-- not do that, once I realized you were wearing it, because I didn’t need that level of detail, but.”

“Oh!” he said. And he laughed. “So you know how boring my life truly is,” he said. “It’s all a lie, the entire debauched persona, and now you know!” 

“I do,” she said. His hands were warm, with long strong fingers, and he wrapped them around hers. She looked up into his face. “I don’t want to hurt you, though,” she said. 

He leaned in, slowly, and she stayed where she was and met his mouth with hers. He kissed her for a moment, “You’d maybe be the first who didn’t,” he said. “There’s something about me that makes me fun to hurt, I guess.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “It’s not that I’ve never hurt you. It was fun to snipe at you, before.”

“I’ve been a tempting target my entire life,” Jaskier said, and she could feel it again, feel that bruising right under the surface.

She took his face between her hands. “You’re tempting in a lot of ways,” she said. “Can I stay here with you tonight? I don’t want to be alone and I don’t want you to be alone.”

“Afraid I’ll hurt myself?” he asked, and there was a resentful little spark to it. “Don’t trust me to make my own decisions, the way Geralt doesn’t?”

Ah, so his defense of Geralt was deliberate and overlaid over hurt of his own. Good to know. 

“It’s not that,” she said. The sleeves of her gown were tight, but not so tight she couldn’t budge them. She straightened her arm, making the sleeve ride up just a little, and then turned to show Jaskier the underside of her wrist. When she spoke again, her voice was low. “But I know-- I feel something familiar in you, Jaskier.” 

He looked down at her wrist, and she watched him notice the scar and then, separately, realize what it was. He took her arm in his hands, then, both of them, and then turned his eyes slowly up to her face. He took a breath, let it out, and nodded slightly. 

“You can touch it,” she whispered. “I promise it’s real. It’s from before the transformation. I asked them to leave that, and my eyes. Everything else is different but those two things.”

He ran his thumb delicately over the pale ridge of the scar. It was cool against the warm skin of her wrist, over the pulse point. After a moment he lifted her wrist to his mouth and kissed it gently, chastely. “I never had the courage to cut myself,” he said quietly. “I just used-- drugs, and dangerous people, and that sort of thing, tried to get something else to do the job for me.”

She curled her other hand gently over his cheek, cradling his cheekbone and the edge of his ear. “Have you entirely stopped that?” she asked.

He looked down. “No,” he admitted. “Not-- entirely. It never quite goes away.” His eyes flicked back up to her, gray-blue and lovely and concerned. “You?”

“Mine was more like an animal in a trap trying to gnaw its leg off,” she said, “and I haven’t had to feel that way again, quite, but I know--” 

He leaned forward and kissed her then, and in a moment they were on the bed and she was tangled in her dress. “Hang on,” she said, “I need to--”

He helped her undress, quite skillfully-- she wasn’t used to male lovers being quite so adept at realizing where the hidden fasteners were for a court dress like this one, but he found them unerringly-- and they rolled over into the bed, and she just put her arms around him and held him. 

He put his face in her shoulder. “So, really,” he said quietly, “our takeaway here is that Geralt was actually _right_.”

She kissed his temple. “Let’s leave him out of this for now,” she said. 

“We have to tell him, though,” Jaskier said.

“I mean, of course we will,” she said. She considered it. “Maybe I’ll let you do it, because I think out of sheer reflex I’ll do it as hurtfully as possible, and we don’t want that.”

“We don’t?” he asked hopefully. “Good.”

She wasn’t really convinced, in her heart of hearts, that she didn’t want to hurt Geralt, but somehow she’d become inwardly devoted to the idea of not hurting Jaskier, and hurting Geralt would hurt him, and using him to hurt Geralt would _really_ hurt him, so there was that decision made. 

Jaskier, when made love to for his own sake rather than as part of an admittedly somewhat-twisted vendetta against a mutual lover, was good in bed on his own merits, but not the way Geralt was at all-- Geralt was intensely focused on your pleasure and passionately dedicated to pursuing it. Jaskier was observant, clever, and funny about it, and endearingly wholehearted about everything; pleasure with him was mutual, always, and it was impossible not to find his delight contagious. 

She taught him all the things she liked best, and when he realized she could have multiple orgasms his eyes lit up and he pinned her down and made her come over and over until she shoved him off so she could catch her breath. “They don’t run out,” she said, laughing as she panted. 

“Ah but there’s no point edging a multi,” he said, licking his fingers delightedly. “Why tease when you can just-- have it all, as many times as you want?”

“Fair,” she said, and shivered. “Come on, just get in me.”

“ _I_ can’t go forever, though,” he said. 

“I don’t want you to,” she said, “I need to sleep at some point and my hair’s already a wreck.”

“I’ll fix it,” he said. 

“Just give me your cock, you big goof,” she said. 

“You have the best dirty talk,” he said fondly, and obliged. 

Once he was in her, she murmured in his ear, “If we play our cards right we can probably get Geralt to join us. Do you want that?”

“Mm,” he said, eyes going a bit distant. 

“You think we could get him to fuck you while you fuck me?” she said, rocking her hips playfully to feel how he moved inside her. “You’d barely have to move, he could do all the work.”

“Fuck,” Jaskier said unevenly.

“Oh, or maybe I could use the strap-on and we could fill you from both ends,” she said, and she was teasing him but also it was working for her, and she shivered and clenched around him. “Fuck, Jaskier, we could take turns on you,” and he gritted his teeth-- he _wanted_ that-- and she let out a shivery cry and came again, or maybe still. “Fuck, oh _gods_ , you could both fuck _me_ , oh--”

She put both hands in his hair and pulled, hard but not too hard, and watched his eyes go completely blank as he shook over the edge, incoherent and gasping, spine bowing into a stiff arch. She kissed his mouth well before he’d begun to recover, and his breath was harsh and frantic and his heart was racketing like anything.

She checked in through the ring, and he was just all a wash of overwhelmed sensation and emotion, raw and lurching like a turbulent sea with breakers at the top and a deep sucking undertow underneath, it was so much. She curled her hand around his jaw, working her fingers up into his hair, and held him to her breast and let him breathe, there, holding him, her cheek pressed to the top of his head. 

It was a moment before he stirred in any more purposeful way than just catching his breath. He turned his head a little, and kissed the inside of her wrist-- the scar-- which was in his reach like this. “Yen,” he said. 

She could feel it, then, among all the turbulent emotions, the surge of love-- he loved _her_ , that was how quick he was at this. It shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. She kissed his head and pressed her cheek back where it had been, tightening the arm around the back of his neck. “Jaskier,” she said, “if you ever feel-- _that_ \--” and she petted his hair. “You know. If you want to hurt yourself. I’ll know, if you still have the ring on, I’ll know, and I’ll come. Don’t take that ring off.”

He tightened his arm around her waist. “Yen,” he said.

“And if you take it off to punish yourself I’ll know too,” she said. He currently had no choice but to be honest with her, so she decided to be honest back. “You matter to me, and I don’t bestow that lightly.”

“Okay,” he said, overwhelmed; she thought he might cry. He was feeling a lot, and she wondered if it was usually like that for him or not. She couldn’t tell. She hadn’t really been paying attention, last time.

She held him, meaning to wait until he fell asleep and then go clean herself up and make herself more comfortable, but what happened instead was that she fell asleep.

______

Triss decided Eskel was probably the most sympathetic of the Witchers, and she should try to talk to him to get a better idea of how things worked around here. She contemplated wandering around looking for him, and wandered as far as the hall where they ate, and then over to the one they used as a library, before deciding that this was futile. She crouched down right in the library and used ash from the cold brazier and a dash of candle wax from one of the candles on the table to draw a quick finding spell. 

Oh, she’d been close-- he was in the kitchen. She stood up and wiped the spell out with her foot, and turned and shrieked because Lambert was standing directly behind her, frowning in what looked like anger.

“What was that?” he demanded. “What are you doing?”

“Meli _tele_ , you startled me,” she said. “Don’t sneak up on people like that!”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” he said. “What are you doing? That was a spell, what betwitchment are you laying over us?”

She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much but was more than enough to fix him with a cold stare. “If I wanted to hurt you, I already would have,” she said. 

“You still could,” he sneered. “Don’t act like you couldn’t, Merigold.” He pronounced her name like it was some kind of insult.

“Fine, then,” she said, “I could. I could do a lot of things, Lambert. But why would I bother coming all this way first? I could have destroyed you without leaving home, and be sleeping a damned sight warmer at night.”

“Where’s the fun and challenge in that?” he said. 

“You tell me,” she said. “I have enough fun and challenges in my daily life without seeking out more of them. I’m here as a favor to Geralt, and if you don’t think I should be here, you perhaps ought to take that up with him and not me.”

“I just want to know what spell you were casting,” he said, frowning at the ash smear on the floor.

She took a deep breath, and said calmly, “If you want to learn about spellcasting, you can sit in on Ciri’s lessons once she gets that far. Now excuse me.”

To her surprise, he stood aside and let her leave the room.

He frightened her more the more she knew him, the opposite of Eskel. She didn’t let herself break into a run. It was foolish; she was more than his match, and anyway, he’d be able to hear that she was running. She kept her pace measured, and went straight to the kitchen, pushed through the heavy door, pushed it shut behind herself, and leaned against it.

It was warm in here, very warm, pleasantly so, and she relaxed into it with surprise. 

Eskel was standing at the work table in an uncharacteristic state of undress-- no armor, only wearing an undyed and slightly threadbare shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a work smock, almost an apron, tied over the top, and he was up to his elbows in flour. He blinked at her, scowling, but after a moment she realized that he was probably not as angry as he looked, the scar tissue was twisting his mouth a little on one side. 

“Can I help you?” he said mildly, eyebrows going up. 

She breathed in, held it, and breathed out. “I don’t remember why I was looking for you, now,” she confessed. “Tell me, is Lambert always hostile, or is that a special treat just for me?”

Eskel’s mouth pulled toward the scarred side, and she could tell he was making a wry face from the way the corner of his eye crinkled too. He was lucky whatever had done that to his face had missed the eye, she thought; there wasn’t much space there. “Lambert’s like that to everyone,” he said. “I mean, to be fair, he’s seen a lot of awful things.” He paused, used his wrist to push his hair out of his eyes, and wound up with a smudge of flour across his forehead. 

“Are you-- making bread?” Triss asked.

Eskel tilted his head a little. “I would be fascinated to know what else it looks like I’m doing,” he said. “Do they grow bread on trees at Aretuza?”

He _was_ making bread. He had a large mass of risen dough and clearly had been kneading it across the floured surface of the table, and was now separating it and shaping it into loaves. 

“Oh,” she said. 

“Did you think our servants made it for us?” he needled gently. 

“I assumed you had a Sign that did that,” she said. “Like, one for fire, and one for knocking people over, and one for shielding, and one for cooking.”

Eskel managed to nod very seriously, biting his lips into a suitable frown. “Ah yes,” he said. “Properly, though, we’d need one for baking, and one for sauteeing, and one for roasting. The rest you could probably do with variations, but Signs are by rote so you can’t really bend them very far. Not like you can with spells.”

“Have you studied much spellcasting?” Triss asked, coming over to look more closely at the bread. She had never really been taught to bake. She remembered the household bread-making of her childhood, every day, this exact process, with a mass of dough being baked into enough loaves to satisfy the house’s needs, always left to rise overnight and then shaped first thing in the morning and baked later after the oven was hot. 

Eskel shook his head. “We can’t do it,” he said, “so I’ve read a couple of books out of general interest, but. The mages who designed Witchers didn’t want to make us mages, so. We can’t. Just Signs.”

“You couldn’t make someone into a mage anyway,” Triss said, frowning. “If there’s no…” She paused, and was struck by a sudden thought. “Who becomes Witchers? I mean, how do you recruit?”

“We don’t,” Eskel said, raising an eyebrow, all amusement vanished and a distinct wary coldness settling into his gaze.

“I’m not trying to uncover secrets, but--” She waved her hands in front of herself, a little gesture of negation. “The boys, brought here to be Witchers-- were they chosen for their potential? Was that it?”

Eskel contemplated her for a moment, going back to his work-- he was quite expert, and very efficiently shaped the dough into fairly uniform loaves with just a few economical gestures apiece, then set them in a neat grid to proof in the corner of the table. Triss had only ever made a mess the few times she’d been allowed to help with dough, getting it all over her hands and herself and everything she’d touched, but she hadn’t tried since she was a child. Clearly, this was one of Eskel’s regular tasks.

“As I understand it,” he said, “mage potential manifests at puberty, generally. You wouldn’t generally know if a prepubescent child had any abilities.”

“That’s largely true,” Triss said. She shed her coat; it really was warm in here, and there were pegs along the wall for hanging things. There, in fact, was Eskel’s usual quilted gambeson, hung neatly on the peg.

“The process of becoming a Witcher must be undertaken before puberty,” Eskel said.

“So, no,” Triss said, shaking out her skirts so they lay right without her coat over them. “Witcher candidates aren’t chosen because they have mage potential.”

“No,” Eskel said. He took a breath in, and then let it out. “We were chosen largely because we were available. I was an orphan. Lambert was claimed by the law of Surprise. Geralt was… I’m not sure, Vesemir won’t talk about it. Most of us were orphans or foundlings, or in some way outcast. The ones in charge of training us weeded some of us out, I do know that-- those of us who were obviously physically or temperamentally unsuited to it, they’d go off somewhere out into the world and find a place for those kids, I don’t know where. But no. I have a suspicion that those of us with mage potential survived the Trials better but I have nothing to back that up.”

She tilted her head. “You think you had mage potential,” she said.

Eskel shrugged. “I don’t know a great deal about it,” he said, “but I know my Signs are unusually strong.” He gently moved another loaf to the corner of the table with the others, and dusted the surface down with another handful of flour.. “I do know Vesemir once let slip a hint that Geralt’s mother was a sorceress.”

Triss frowned. “That’s not possible,” she said.

Eskel shrugged again. “Anything’s possible,” he said. “Anyway, Geralt took the mutations so well that they put him through a second round. He absolutely had _some_ sort of genetic predisposition to it. He can take more damage and more toxicity than any of us, thanks to that.”

“Hm,” Triss said. This was a lot more information than she’d counted on getting. “I wonder if I could tell, if you had mage potential.” She stepped a little closer to him, though she stayed around the corner of the table so she wouldn’t crowd him. 

As if she could crowd him, at her diminutive size. He was tall, and well-built, and his hands looked big enough to span her waist. He hadn’t stopped working through the whole conversation, and now he was forming the last of the dough, so well-kneaded it looked like satin, into a nice round boule shape, a little smaller than the other long loaves he’d been making. Then he shook out a towel and laid it gently over the top of the array of loaves, to let them proof. 

He turned slightly, putting one hand on his hip and leaning the other on the table. “Well,” he said, “can you?”

“No,” she said slowly, thoughtful. “I don’t think so.”

“I’m not what I was,” he said. “I’ve been literally changed in every fundamental way. I’m not human anymore, so I don’t see how you could possibly tell much about what I was or wasn’t, before.”

She’d never seen him without armor or at least a quilted or otherwise-structured outer layer before. He was really only wearing the one layer, just a shirt, and he pulled the smock off and shook flour off of it. She’d assumed the gambeson he habitually wore was heavily-padded, but now she could see it wasn’t; he really was that big, and the muscles of his shoulders moved visibly under the shirt as he folded the smock and draped it over the edge of a cupboard door. It was more attention than she normally paid to him. 

“I, um,” she said, and glanced up at his face. His eyes were fixed on her, and the cat-pupils were dilated to roundness in the relatively dim room. It made him look disarmingly normal. 

He blinked. “Well?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be able to tell by looking anyway,” she said, suddenly oddly nervous, and laughed. “I, ah.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, dropping his voice to just above a whisper. “You seem rattled.”

“I,” she said, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. Why should it be so affecting, to see a big burly man in only a shirt? That wasn’t her type at all. “Er, that is--”

“What did Lambert say to you?” Eskel asked, leaning in a little to talk even more quietly. Oh, right, because Lambert was likely lurking on the other side of the door. “I mean, there’s not much I can really do to him, but I can at least run interference. You’re here as a favor, he shouldn’t be hassling you. It’s not like it’s unheard of to have mages at Kaer Morhen, we always had at least one the whole time he was growing up.”

“I think-- I think I can handle him,” she said, “but I, ah, I really appreciate the offer.” He smelled of soap, herbs, and flour, and somehow even in the warm room she was aware of the warmth of his body. He usually had thick leather cuffs on, but his forearms were bare, ropy with muscle and scars. 

“You were right to come to me and not Geralt, though,” Eskel said. “Geralt tends to… he’s a little more hot-headed. He and Lambert mostly get along fine but when they butt heads it’s a whole pain in the ass, they usually have to fight it out and it’s miserable for the rest of us until they sort things out.”

“That’s good to know,” Triss said. That was why she’d been looking for him-- insights like this. “Is, ah-- Is Vesemir in charge, though? I got the feeling like he’s…”

Eskel tilted his head a little. “Yes and no,” he said. “None of us likes to disagree with him, but he’s also not particularly interested in bossing us around.”

“Sometimes you call him _master_ ,” Triss pointed out.

“He was our teacher,” Eskel said. “When we were boys. All of us. He’s been here forever.”

That sounded impressive. “He was-- what, he taught all the Witchers, ever?”

“I mean,” Eskel said. “He was one of several. He specialized in swordsmanship, taught us when we were a little older-- the advanced stuff, that was all him. But he’s the only one left, so.”

Vesemir was the one Triss absolutely could not get a handle on at all. He was ancient, she could sense that, but beyond that couldn’t get a read on him. “What happened to the others?” she asked, leaning against the edge of the table. 

“Ah, don’t get flour on your nice dress,” Eskel said in dismay, and she jerked back a little, realizing there was now a white line across the waist of her dress. He wiped at it with his hand, and she caught his hand with hers.

“Oh no,” she said, “you’re making it worse, your hands are all floury.”

“Oh, damn it,” he said, and now he was standing really close to her, right in her space, and he was really tall and really big and her mouth went dry. His hand was warm and callused and big enough to go halfway around her waist and now she was thinking about what else he could do with big hands like that, and it was all a disaster. 

She looked up at him. “It’s, it’s okay,” she said, “I can-- uh,” and he looked frozen in confusion.

The door burst open and they both jumped like they’d been burned. “Ah,” Coen said, “Miss Merigold-- er.” He paused. “Uh. Sorry to startle you. But. The girl’s not well and Geralt asked if I could find you.”

“Oh,” Triss said, “where is she?” She grabbed her coat from the peg by the door, and turned as she put it on, glancing back at Eskel. 

He was brushing his hands together, looking thoughtful and concerned, but she realized he couldn’t really leave the oven unattended like this. He caught her eye as she went out the door, and gave her a concerned nod. 


	8. Disposable

  
  


“She’s all right,” Vesemir said.

Geralt spun and paced back across the hallway. “You don’t know that,” he said.

“I _do_ know that,” Vesemir insisted. His expression was dangerous, flinty. It was a familiar one, and decades of experience on top of intense childhood conditioning told Geralt he was on unsteady ground here and needed to beat a hasty retreat. But there was no gods-damned way Geralt was going to back down. He was absolutely furious, so full of adrenaline he could have taken apart an endrega queen without a pause. Ciri had collapsed, sobbing until she’d vomited, and Vesemir had still been berating her to get up and try again. 

Eskel had turned up at some point and was trying to catch Geralt’s eye a little farther down the hallway. Geralt spun again, facing away from him; he wasn’t going to be placated. 

“I never coddled you boys like this,” Vesemir said. He’d said it before, earlier, too, before Triss had come, and it had taken everything in Geralt not to snap at him then. 

This time, Geralt turned and looked straight into his face. “I know,” he said. 

Vesemir stared at him, relentless eye contact, and all of Geralt’s instincts wanted to make him drop his gaze, submit to his elder, but he wasn’t going to. He _couldn’t_. Vesemir’s expression shifted slowly, going incredulous and offended as Geralt didn’t move. 

“Geralt,” Eskel said, coming up behind him. 

Vesemir blinked at that, and looked at Eskel, and now his expression changed slightly again, to something Geralt wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before. Doubt, maybe. No, _hurt_. “You think I did wrong,” Vesemir said quietly. “You think I did _you_ wrong.”

“It was different,” Eskel said, insistent.

It was the quiet inward collapse into pain behind Vesemir’s eyes that made Geralt relent. “It was different,” he agreed, finally dropping his gaze. “You weren’t the only one, Vesemir. And we-- there were more of us, and we were different. But.”

Eskel was standing quite close behind Geralt now. After a moment, in which Geralt let his shoulders down a little to acknowledge he knew where Eskel was, Eskel put his hand in the small of Geralt’s back, reassuringly. Supportively. 

Bolstered, Geralt said, “She’s not going to be able to take the Trials, because we can’t do them.”

“So she’ll have to be tougher,” Vesemir said.

“No,” Geralt said. He steeled himself and looked up, back into Vesemir’s face. “She’ll have to be smarter. She won’t be able to use potions, she won’t be able to take damage the way we do-- she won’t be able to just be faster and stronger than anything she encounters. She’ll have to be smarter, and more patient.”

“She’ll still need to be strong and fast,” Vesemir said.

“Right,” Geralt said, “of course, and-- I know you know how to teach her that. But.” He worked his mouth, biting his lip, as he looked for the words. “But she’ll have to-- be strong on the _inside_. She’ll have to believe in herself.” He didn’t know how to explain it any better than that. 

“Mm,” Eskel said, and moved his hand to Geralt’s shoulder. “You’re right.”

“She’ll need to know her useful limits,” Geralt said. “And she’ll have to be better at caring for herself than we are, because she can’t fall back on healing potions.”

“The only way she’ll survive at all is if she thinks she deserves to,” Eskel put in, which for some reason went straight through Geralt like a knife, and he had to grit his teeth at it. 

Vesemir looked stricken. “I never,” he said, but trailed off. His mouth moved, but his gaze had gone distant. He was thinking about that, now-- they all were, by the tightness of Eskel’s grip. 

“It was different then,” Geralt said quietly. “There were so many of us, and most of us would die before we even went out, and there were just-- always more, and it didn’t matter. But it’s not like that anymore.”

“I never thought of any of you as _disposable_ ,” Vesemir said, very quiet, his voice very rough, and his gaze still distant. “Any of-- us.”

“And yet,” Eskel said, nearly a whisper. 

“It wasn’t just you,” Geralt said. “You weren’t in charge, Master. You were just one of them. You were always fair with us.”

“But I was part of it,” Vesemir said. 

“We were all part of it,” Geralt said. 

“I was a much more instrumental part of it,” Vesemir said. 

“I’m not angry at you,” Geralt said, “and I don’t blame you. You did the best you could with me. Not everyone did. But I think we can do better, with Ciri. Or at least better for _her_. I’m sorry, Master Vesemir, I don’t want to question you, but we have to be more sensible with her.”

“If nothing else,” Eskel said, “there’s only the one of her, we can’t afford to kill her.”

It was a semi-horrible attempt at levity, and Geralt elbowed him. But he didn’t elbow him hard, so Eskel didn’t flinch, and just shook Geralt’s shoulder with his hand in response.

Triss opened the door of the room. “She’s fine,” she said, before anything else, and they all audibly let out their breaths. “But I have to talk to you about what she’s been eating, I think.”

Geralt nodded solemnly at that, and turned to follow her into the room. Eskel let go of him, hanging back a little, but Vesemir came up beside him and took his shoulder instead. 

Vesemir didn’t meet Geralt’s eyes, but Geralt covered the hand on his shoulder briefly with his own, squeezed it, and went into the room. Maybe Vesemir was on the same page, now. He didn’t want to fight about it, and he felt weirdly emotionally torn-up over it, but at least his rage-instinct to fight everyone had eased.

Ciri looked wan and sad but much better, and Geralt could smell that she’d been given an herbal remedy against muscle spasms recently enough that it probably hadn’t entirely kicked in yet. Muscle spasms? He considered that a moment, and then caught the faint scent of blood, and realized what it was. 

“Oh,” Geralt said. “The-- mushrooms.” They’d been feeding her the same modified diet they’d eaten as trainees, but Geralt remembered how his body had changed-- more than just from the training itself, more rapidly than normal growth could have accounted for. It was to make them stronger for the Trials, but what it would do to a normal human--

“They have an adverse affect on her hormones,” Triss said. “They’re interfering with her menstrual cycle, and making it irregular and-- difficult.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Vesemir said quietly. “The Wolf School never taught girls.”

“And the boys were younger,” Eskel put in. 

They all nodded thoughtfully, and finally Geralt said, “So we’ll have to-- keep that in mind.” He sighed. “Well, as we were discussing, we can’t really train her just like a conventional Witcher.”

Ciri sat up in dismay at that, wobbling a little. “But I want,” she said, and stopped as her voice went too thick to continue. 

Geralt sighed, and sat down next to her, putting his arm around her. “We were talking about it,” he said, “and we can’t-- you’re going to have to learn other skills. Our training depends on us just being able to count on being faster and stronger than anything else, and able to take more damage because we can rely on potions. You won’t have any of that, we can’t give it to you. So you’ll have to learn other things.”

Her tears spilled over, and he pulled her tighter against his shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said softly, “we’ll still train you to be better than anybody else. But it means we’re going to have to be smart about it.”

“Probably have a better success rate this way,” Eskel said quietly. 

“Well,” Vesemir said. “If Lambert had good success at the hunt, then we’ll have rabbit for dinner, that should help.”

“Actually,” Triss said, “red meat would be just the thing she needs.”

Ciri sighed miserably and snuggled herself closer to Geralt, who smoothed his hand down her back. “So we’ll figure it out,” he said to her. 

_____

Eskel had to hurry back to the kitchen, because the bread was probably overproofed by now. He managed to rescue it and get it into the oven, and then had to stand there minding it. How people without magic at all did this, he didn’t know; he always had to use Igni at the end as the oven inevitably cooled off to much.

Coen came in, warming his hands by the fire, and stood around being smug and mysterious for a bit, and finally Eskel said, “What?”

“Nothing,” Coen said, smiling mysteriously. Warm enough now, he moved and leaned against the wall. “So what are you going to do about her, hm?”

“Ciri?” Eskel asked, mystified. “It’s not really my decision, is it?”

Coen gave him a unimpressed look. “Not the child,” he said. “Come on now.”

“Who, then?” Eskel said, annoyed. 

“Who else could I even be talking about?” Coen said. “It’s not like there’s such a large stock of women here.”

Eskel shook his head, baffled. “I, none,” he said. “Who am I doing anything about?”

Coen rolled his eyes a little. “Fine, fine,” he said, “you don’t want me poking my nose in, I get it.”

“No,” Eskel said, “I really don’t understand what you’re asking me, I’m not trying to be unfriendly.” There was only one other entity in this entire fortress who could plausibly be referred to with a female pronoun, if you discounted Roach the mare, or the nanny goat Spots. Or, he supposed, any of the hens. He squinted. “You mean Triss?”

“Yes,” Coen said patiently. “By the stars, I’m sorry I asked.”

“No,” Eskel said, “no, I--” He hadn’t managed to strike up any kind of accord with the Griffin, and he wasn’t willing to be cold to him now either. “I just-- I don’t understand the question. She’s here as a guest of Geralt and if Lambert keeps hassling her I’ll have to figure out a way to keep the peace, but--”

“Hm,” Coen said, and it was clear that wasn’t what he’d meant at all.

“I’m worried something else is bothering her,” Eskel said, more honestly than he meant to be, but maybe she’d spoken to Coen beforehand, so maybe he knew more. “She was strangely agitated but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.”

“Agitated,” Coen said, eyebrows going up.

“Yeah,” Eskel said. “It was weird. Why, has she said anything to you?”

“I don’t think she’s spoken a single word to me,” Coen said, “nor should I expect her to, but she sought you right out. Seems to me she knows who’s really in charge here.”

Eskel blinked. Did Coen think Eskel was somehow manipulating everyone else? Or what? “Me? I’m not in charge of anything, I just seem to be the only one who cares about keeping the peace at all.” Vesemir couldn’t help being aloof, he was ancient and the others all held him at a remove. Lambert was a chaos goblin at the best of times, though he had mellowed a lot in the last few years and Eskel didn’t know if any of the others knew why and was absolutely not going to bring it up, and Geralt, well, Geralt was a walking disaster factory, but that wasn’t his fault. 

“That’s a kind of power,” Coen said. “I don’t think it’s really power she’s after from you, though. You really think that was her being agitated?”

“I don’t know,” Eskel said, feeling a bit flustered himself. He picked up the bread peel and very carefully rearranged a couple of the loaves, rotating them so they’d cook more evenly. “I couldn’t figure out what she really wanted me to say. She wanted something from me but I don’t understand what it was.”

Coen squinted at him, almost incredulous. “I-- really?”

There was a muffled thump at the outer door. “Hey!” It was Lambert’s voice. “Somebody get the handle or I’ll blow the door in!”

“What the fuck,” Eskel said, annoyed, and opened the door for him. “If you’ve got a hand free for _Aard_ you’ve got a hand free to open the fucking door.”

Lambert staggered in with a rough-quartered deer carcass slung over both shoulders, intense cold blowing in with him. He looked miserable. “Fuck,” he said, and stomped across the floor to dump the quarters onto the bench. “I can’t feel my fucking legs. It’s godsdamned miserable out there.”

Eskel shoved the door shut, rolling his eyes at Lambert’s dramatics. “Wash up, you’re disgusting and I’m right in the middle of a baking day.”

“Wahh, wahh,” Lambert said, “poor Eskel, stuck in the hot kitchen on a fucking miserable day.” He shed several outer layers and went to hang them up by the door. “Hey, Coen.”

“I thought you weren’t going far,” Coen said. “How did you get a deer at this hour?”

“Lucky,” Lambert said. “I went for rabbits but something put this guy up and I lucked out.” He washed his hands, hissing and groaning at the hot water on cold hands, and then washed his face too for good measure. Despite appearances, Lambert was probably the most fastidious of them about his hygiene, which said a lot; Geralt was obsessed with baths but Eskel rather thought that was sheer hedonism and not really hygiene-related at all. 

“Hey,” Lambert said, when he was done messing around in the sink basin, “did either of you notice that mage doing a bunch of nonsense this morning? I walked in on her in the library casting some spell and she wouldn’t tell me what she was doing, but she had this whole diagram with ash on the floor and had lit one of the candles and was like, dripping wax into it. It looked really elaborate and my medallion was going nuts.”

“Hm,” Eskel said. 

“Hm!” Coen said. “No. Did you ask her nicely?”

“Nicely,” Lambert said. “I’m gonna ask her _nicely_ \--”

“She’s here as a guest,” Eskel said, making his voice as mild as he could manage. “ _Nicely_ ’s probably about the minimum you ought to strive for.”

“It looked like she was casting some Great Work,” Lambert said. “Like she was gonna summon some kind of great beast or open a portal or bring down the keep or something!”

“She wasn’t, though,” Eskel said. “And then she came in here all rattled and was asking me what exactly is wrong with you, so whatever you said to her certainly didn’t come across as reasonable concern. I know you know fucking manners, Lambert, I was there when they were beaten into you.”

It wasn’t the right thing to say, but Eskel was tired and confused and not in the mood to be conciliatory. Lambert bristled, and said, “What, are you gonna try to beat more into me?”

“What would be the point?” Eskel said. “What would be the fucking point, Lambert? Like teaching a dog to wear shoes, what’s the fucking point?”

“Hey,” Coen said, “hey, let’s calm down. I know Lambert’s perfectly capable of being sweet.”

For some reason, that almost sounded like a threat, but it also sounded like Eskel had backup in this fight, so it calmed him down a bit. Lambert glowered grimly at Coen, like Coen had some leverage over him maybe. Maybe he did-- Eskel was the one who’d invited Coen, but he’d been Lambert’s friend first. Lambert was the one who’d had other Griffin friends. Eskel knew fine well Lambert had more friends from other schools than the rest of them-- maybe because he didn’t have any classmates left, didn’t have anyone he could rely on like Geralt could on Eskel. (Eskel had almost thought it the other way, and had to reluctantly admit that he really couldn’t rely on Geralt, not lately and not really ever. Geralt was too outward-facing, too likely not to come back when needed. If Eskel were smart, he’d’ve followed Lambert’s lead and branched out, but it was too late for Griffins and most of the Cats were unreliable now.)

Ah, but that train of thought gave Eskel the insight he’d been wondering about: obviously, Coen knew Lambert’s other friends, and Lambert thought Eskel didn’t. Coen’s leverage was to talk about these other friends. But Eskel had known for a while that Lambert spent most of his summers going around with a particular Cat witcher, and that they were more than just friends. He’d spoken to the Cat witcher about it, and had determined that the guy was probably all right. Aiden, was his name, and Lambert was absolutely besotted with him, and this definitely confirmed to Eskel that Aiden had in fact never breathed a word about his conversation with Eskel. 

As he’d said. But that meant that Lambert didn’t know Eskel knew, and Coen thought none of the other Wolves knew, and also knew that Lambert didn’t _want_ the Wolves to know, and. Eskel sighed. 

“I know it too,” he said. “Lambert, ease off. You know how this works. We’re all trapped in here until spring. So don’t make this more trouble than it has to be. Triss Merigold is Geralt’s guest, and Ciri needs her to be here. I know you like Ciri, don’t pretend you don’t. She got sick this morning and Triss is helping her.”

Lambert looked alarmed. “Ciri’s sick?” His expression darkened. “Was that what the spell she was--”

Eskel threw a tiny, heavily-modified _Yrden_ at him, modified to mostly just hold his mouth shut. It was a modification he’d only ever used on Lambert. “It’s the mushrooms, Lambert, that are making Ciri sick, they’re interfering with her menstrual cycle. If you start any more fucking _bullshit_ about Triss I’m going to take it personally.”

Lambert struggled ineffectually against the trap but gave up immediately, because everybody knew you couldn’t break Eskel’s Signs if you weren’t pre-prepared to do it. It was how he’d put Geralt through so many walls. It was how he won every fight. 

Eskel wasn’t taking his eyes off Lambert, staring him down, but he could see Coen fidgeting uncomfortably in the background. Lambert glared furiously, but finally, eventually, he dropped his gaze, conceding. Eskel held the sign a moment longer, then released Lambert, who had flushed dark with fury but kept his gaze down another moment. 

“I hate you,” he said quietly. 

“You don’t,” Eskel said, “and I’m right. She is here to help, and we need her help, and you _cannot_ be a dick to her, Lambert.”

Lambert looked up at that, eyes flashing. “I sure fucking can,” he said. 

“Yeah but _don’t_ ,” Coen put in. 

Good, he was on Eskel’s side in this after all.

“No one’s telling you that you can’t be suspicious,” Eskel said. “Nobody’s saying you can’t keep an eye on things and be prepared for inevitable betrayal or whatever. But I’m saying, you need to not make yourself obnoxious. Because Ciri needs her help, and I know you don’t want to hurt Ciri.”

Lambert stared at him a moment longer, and then let his breath out, just a little, shoulders coming down just the tiniest bit. “I don’t,” he admitted.

“You don’t have to be nice,” Eskel conceded. “But you have to be inoffensive enough that you don’t scare her off. Because Ciri needs her.”

Lambert sighed, shuffled his feet, and said, “Fine.”

“Also she’s sweet on Eskel,” Coen put in.

Eskel frowned at him. Why would he have to go and say something like that when it wasn’t even true? “No she’s not,” he said. 

“Come on,” Coen said. “Did you really not notice that?”

“Really?” Lambert said, looking-- weirdly excited about it, why would that be? 

Eskel shook his head. “She wanted something from me but it was certainly not _that_ , Coen.”

“What was it, then?” Coen asked. “You just said, you weren’t sure what it was. Well, I _am_ , Eskel.” 

Eskel stared at him for a moment, trying to work out whether the Griffin was making fun of him, and if so, why. “I,” he said, “really don’t think--” He trailed off, then picked up the peel and went to fuss with the bread some more. The oven was still hot enough, but the smaller loaves were nearly done. “Lambert, are you just going to leave that carcass there to leak, or what?”

“Right, right,” Lambert said. “Let me finish the rough cuts and I’ll hang the rest. I was going to get Geralt to help me but if Ciri’s not well--”

“I don’t think he’ll be out anytime soon,” Eskel said. He sighed. “I’ll help you once I’ve got the last of the bread out.”

________

  
  


“She can stay with me the rest of the day,” Triss said. “That would be fine, Geralt, go on. She’ll probably sleep for a while and then I have some nice quiet activities we can do. I don’t think she should be required to run around much today, and maybe not tomorrow either.”

Geralt bit his lip. Ciri was fast asleep now, curled into a miserable little ball on the settee that Triss had somehow conjured for the sitting room of her suite, draped in luxurious furs Triss had also conjured from somewhere. He wanted to insist on staying, in case Ciri woke up and needed him, but he could imagine Triss probably didn’t want him hanging around her rooms. “I,” he said, and grimaced. “Fine. All right. Just--”

“Of course, if she wakes and is looking for you, I’ll call you,” Triss said. “And yes, I have ways to know where you’ll be. Don’t worry about it.”

He nodded, gathering himself. He did have things he needed to do. Oh, but one thing. “Ah,” he said, “your-- megascope. Is that-- do you need to be a mage to use one?”

“No,” Triss said, “not if it’s set up correctly.” She smiled at him. “You want to talk to Yennefer alone.”

Actually, he wanted to talk to Jaskier, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. “I,” he said, “I’m not sure, but-- yes, there were things I wanted to ask that I couldn’t say in front of Ciri.”

Triss looked thoughtful. “She might not answer, for you,” she said. “Or, that is-- well, she’ll know it’s my scope, she won’t expect it to be you. She might be annoyed with me.”

“Oh,” Geralt said. He’d have to think of something else, then. Whatever Triss and Yennefer had spoken of, it was enough that Triss knew Yennefer didn’t want to speak to him. That wasn’t… it didn’t feel good. 

“I’ll set it up for you and call her and ask if she’ll talk to you,” Triss said. “Then she won’t be mad at me.”

“I don’t want to put you in the middle,” Geralt said. 

“She put me in the middle by asking me to come here,” Triss said, and her smile was sweet and wistful. “Not that I’m not enjoying myself. Ciri is darling and I’m, well. Growing used to your friends.”

Geralt grimaced. He hadn’t really concerned himself with how she was settling in. Lambert was probably being a dick to her. But, well, she was not only an adult, but also a mage, so she could probably mind herself. 

“Oh, no,” she said, “I meant it, it really is fine. Don’t worry.” She went and opened one of the trunks in the room, and pulled out the components of the megascope. “Hm, where can we set this up where you can have some privacy to talk?”

Geralt considered it. “Probably my room,” he said. It was just down the hall, leaving Ciri here wouldn’t be unreasonable. 

He carried most of the components, and Triss held the crystal fittings. She looked curiously around the room. “This is-- cozier than I’d expected,” she said. 

Geralt cast a critical eye over the room. He had, in his younger days, hauled back a lot of trophies to hang up, furs and skins and scales and bones and horns and things, as had been the fashion, but more recently he’d been more focused on creature comforts and less-grisly mementoes. He had more bookshelves than he’d quite intended to, now, and in past winters he’d spent a lot of time on the fur-bedecked trunk seat by the window reading, but this winter hadn’t lent itself to that sort of pursuit. But then, he wasn’t quite sure what a sorceress would expect a Witcher’s bedroom to look like. 

At least it was reasonably tidy, at the moment, though that was mostly because he hadn’t begun his traditional winter’s activity of mending all his damaged gear. All he’d done so far was re-sharpen all his knives, and next he’d have to re-coat the silver ones, and that would make a mess, but not in here.

He shrugged. “It’s cold,” he said. “I like not being cold.”

“I don’t blame you for that,” she said. She looked out the window. “That’s a nice view, though.”

“It is,” he said. “I do sit there a lot.”

She sighed. “It’s probably lovely here when it’s not snowing sideways,” she said, and started to set up the megascope. 

Geralt helped, insofar as he understood how the thing was meant to go together. She only had to correct him a couple of times, and then his medallion pulsed, once. The device itself hadn’t given any sign, but Geralt knew it was ready now.

“What?” Triss said, looking at him quizzically, and he realized he’d reacted, stepping back and bracing himself. 

“Oh,” he said. “I can-- I can feel it’s active.”

“It’s not,” she said, frowning, “doing anything yet.”

Geralt touched the medallion self-consciously. “Er,” he said, “we have-- Witchers can sense magic. It just did-- not very much but it did something, I could feel that.”

“Really,” Triss said. She did seem very interested in Witchers. Well… it did seem like the sort of thing mages would want to know more about. It made Geralt nervous-- made them all nervous. Mages being curious about Witchers never ended well for the Witchers. “Well. It did connect to itself, I suppose there’d be something there to feel. Now there’s an incantation to get it to reach out to the other megascope. I can do that, and then leave, or I can teach it to you so you can do it later.”

“Probably best to do it later,” Geralt said. So Triss went over the words with him, and he memorized them, and then recorded a greeting from herself into a crystal, that he could play when he connected the megascope, so that Yennefer could decide if she wanted to speak to him. 

“Hello, Yennefer,” Triss said. “I’m sending you a recorded message this time. I’m doing well here, by the way, and it’s more fun than I’d expected, and I’ll have to tell you about that some other time but it’s just as well-- I’ll have more news later, at the moment it’s mostly just idle speculation. But now, for the important part of the message-- I’ve loaned the megascope to Geralt because he wanted to talk to you without Cirilla present, and I thought you’d like fair warning. If you call back, he’s the one who’ll answer, and he’s alone in the room so you can say anything you like to him. If you want to just send a recorded message back, I’ve taught him how to get one of those, so you can do that. It’s up to you, dear, and I’ll talk to you later. Probably tomorrow? I’m desperate for updates on all of our little projects, so we’ll talk then, shall we?”

She sealed off the crystal and slotted it into the megascope. “When you initiate the connection, if you push this, it will send it,” she said. “Then you can sit and wait for a response, and when one comes, you can receive it here.”

Geralt investigated the thing, demonstrated to Triss’s satisfaction that he knew how to work the thing, and then she left. He fought off the urge to immediately use the megascope-- was that the djinn thing, making him so desperate to contact her? He couldn’t tell. Instead, he went to catch up on some of the day’s work that he’d abandoned to care for Ciri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen i don't care if that's not how _Yrden_ works, maybe I'm enjoying Lan Zhan's silencing charm too much in The Untamed but also you have to admit that this is hilarious. If anyone in the Witcher 'verse could do this, it would be Eskel, and it would be solely for Lambert.


	9. Long Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuing my theme of being accidentally really topical, this features a fantasy!Skype session, thanks to the game having just such a mechanism already in its worldbuilding.  
> But no, it's not a business meeting.  
> Mostly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter turned out really long, block out some time in your schedule. I don't think there are any triggers to warn for, though let me know if I'm wrong; there's a hint of a panic attack that gets staved off, and then there's videoconference sex.
> 
> Ah, a mild tw: Yennefer calls Jaskier a few sexy-nasty things in the throes of passion: he's into it, but brace yourself if you find that kind of language upsetting.

Eskel tapped hesitantly on the door, feeling slightly foolish. Coen had insisted that since neither Ciri nor Triss had come down on time for dinner, Eskel should be the one to bring food up to them, and strangely, Geralt had backed him up. Eskel had wanted to corner Geralt and talk to him for a bit, but he had felt it would be weird to so flatly refuse to take on this task, when Coen so rarely insisted on anything.

So, here he was, holding a tray of food and uncomfortably prepared for this to go awkwardly.

Triss opened the door, and smiled politely, leaning against it as she peered around. “Oh,” she said, “wonderful, thank you so much!”

 _Maybe_ that smile was a little warmer than polite. “Coen was worried you’d miss out,” Eskel said a bit gruffly, not wanting to take the credit. 

“Coen was, was he,” Triss said, seeming like maybe she was amused. “I didn’t know he was in charge of dinner tonight. I thought it was your turn.”

“It was,” Eskel said. “My turn. I just. We, um.”

“Why don’t you come in,” Triss said sweetly. “Ciri, Eskel brought dinner! You don’t have to change after all.”

Eskel stepped into the room and blinked. It was _much_ warmer in here. Triss was wearing a flowy sleeveless gown with trailing bits of translucent fabric everywhere and elaborate jeweled embroidery on the, uh, breast part of it. Ciri was also wearing a pretty dress in a rainbow of colors with fluttery ribbons, and her hair was loose and had ribbons in it too, and her face had lots of paint on it. And it was _really_ warm in here, warmer than the fire could account for, and it smelled of perfume.

 _Strongly_ of perfume-- herbs and chemicals and flowers. Eskel hastily set the tray down on the little table, which was strewn with little pots and brushes and things, and turned away so he could sneeze violently, twice, and after the third time he managed to get himself under control. “Pardon,” he said, and found his handkerchief so he could blow his nose. He breathed tentatively, and his nose had adapted enough that the perfume no longer felt like a violent assault. 

“We were having a little party,” Triss said. “Will you stay and join us?”

“Oh, ahh, I was--” Eskel began, and Ciri pouted beseechingly at him. “I mean, I was just going to go do dishes. I guess that’s not urgent.”

“If you made dinner it shouldn’t be your turn to do dishes too,” Triss said, frowning sweetly.

“True,” Eskel said, “but since it’s Ciri’s turn, I wasn’t exactly going to leave them.” Ciri came up and flung her arms around his waist, and he laughed and patted her hair. He still wasn’t quite used to her, how physically affectionate she was. “Are you feeling any better, kid? Vesemir’s all upset, he’s hardly spoken to anyone today.”

“I feel better,” Ciri said, “most of the time, but sometimes it feels like somebody’s jammed a rusty fork into my guts.”

Eskel considered the various times he’d actually had things jammed into his guts, rusty or no, and discarded each of them as unsuitable to compare to this. “Sounds bad,” he said instead. 

“So you’ll stay, then?” Triss asked, and there was something in her expression that Eskel couldn’t read. She seemed… eager, almost predatory. 

“Um,” he said. Ciri, arms still around his waist, looked up at him pleadingly, her pointy little chin digging into his ribs. “Well, yeah, I mean, for a little while anyway.” 

“Great,” Ciri said, delighted, and flung herself away from him. She returned in a moment with a brightly colored, ribbon-festooned circle in one hand. “But it’s not just _any_ party. It’s a _dress-up_ party.”

“Uh,” Eskel said. Ciri climbed up onto the bench next to him and put the circle onto his head. It had silk flowers on it, and she pulled on them to get them to cascade down his back as she settled the circlet on him. “Okay.”

“I don’t think he needs to wear a dress,” Triss said. “But aren’t you a bit warm in that jerkin?”

“I am,” Eskel confessed. “Will I still be adequately dressed for the dress code if I take it off?”

“We can find something,” Ciri said. Eskel took off the jerkin and put it down, and Ciri went and dug through a trunk until she came up with another flowing translucent garment. 

They arrayed Eskel in this… thing, which was a long vest and only fit across the expanse of his back by some careful adjustment of the lacing in the back by Triss. He felt faintly ridiculous, but obviously, it didn’t matter what he looked like, and nobody but these two would see him, and it wasn’t like Triss was actually going to be impressed by his appearance either way. 

The garment did not fasten closed, but Ciri wound a sash around him, a bright rainbow silk sash that he couldn’t begin to guess as to the origin of, and Triss carefully suppressed her amusement and came to help tie it. 

“Hm,” Triss said, “your waist isn’t actually very big at all, compared to the rest of you. We might have to loop this around one more time.”

This occasioned a great deal of reorganization and giggling. Eskel stood patiently with his arms raised out of the way, and had enough of a moment to wish he’d had more than a cup of weak beer with dinner. “It’s a good thing you had a spare outfit,” he said, “because I don’t think I have anything nice enough for this kind of party.”

“Next we have to do your make-up,” Ciri said.

Eskel looked at the paint on her face and something in him went cold. “On my-- _face_?” he said. Ciri nodded. It was hard to talk, and he said, “I don’t, I don’t-- I don’t like that.”

He wasn’t sure why it was so hard to talk all of a sudden, but he was thinking about her little hands wandering across the scarred landscape of the ruins of what had once been his face, and getting paint smeared in all the horrid little crevices that he didn’t like to look at-- it was hard enough to shave, let alone to _paint_ all of that-- and it all seemed like it was pressing down on him and he had to look away. “I don’t want that,” he said quietly, feeling like a jerk. She was just a kid and she just wanted to have fun. He could wear a flower crown and a-- it wasn’t a dress but whatever he was wearing now-- and he could let her paint his-- 

He thought about the lipstick brush getting stuck in the scars where his lip had gotten torn and healed funny, and went hot and then cold all over like he’d had too many potions and needed a White Honey. 

“He doesn’t have to,” Triss said, a little sharply. “Ciri,” she said, more gently, “he doesn’t have to, if he doesn’t want to, it’s all right.”

“You don’t want to?” Ciri asked quietly. 

Eskel swallowed hard. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t-- I don’t like-- things on my face.”

“Not everything is for everybody,” Triss said. “Now, Ciri, we probably should eat dinner, since Eskel was so nice to bring it up for us.”

“It’s probably gone cold by now,” Eskel said, collecting himself, “but I can heat it up again.” He looked critically at the food, and then looked at Triss. “Oh, you probably have a better spell for that, though. Mine’s kind of. Clunky.”

Ciri arranged her fingers, with some concentration, into the correct shape for _Igni_ , but as had been the case every time so far, nothing happened. Triss made a wry face, and then moved her arms in a complicated little maneuver, murmured something, and made a gesture of casting, and the plates began to steam gently. 

“Yeah,” Eskel said, “that’s much nicer a job than I can do. Sometimes I set fire to the table by accident.”

“I doubt that,” Triss said. 

Eskel laughed. “No,” he said, “I absolutely set fire to part of the kitchen last week. Been using Signs for ninety years and sometimes I just-- forget to pay attention. Goes to show you, kid, you can never be too careful with ‘em.”

He sat down on the bench next to Ciri, who fell to her meal with gratifying eagerness. She hadn’t been hungry earlier, which was uncharacteristic of her, so it was good to see her eat. 

Triss ate more delicately, but after a moment she said, “Ah, I know what’s missing,” and got up and came back with a bottle of wine and three glasses. She poured a small serving for Ciri, and then split the rest of the bottle between the other two glasses and gave Eskel one, which he was glad of. Ciri added a little water to hers, as if this was something she was used to. Maybe she was. 

“We were talking over dinner,” Eskel said, “and Lambert said he was interested in working with you, Ciri. We generally don’t let him talk to people, but the two of you actually get along, don’t you?”

“I like Lambert,” Ciri said, frowning. “He’s nice.”

Eskel looked at Triss, who made a funny face over the edge of her wineglass, but then looked innocent as she drank. He nodded, and looked at Ciri. “He’s not very nice to very many people,” he said, “and he’s never shown much aptitude for teaching, but he’s a competent Witcher, especially at alchemy, and his perspective might be useful. I tend to lean on my Signs, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to work for you yet so we probably should make other plans, and Geralt’s double-mutated so he tends to lean on just being able to muscle through anything, but Lambert actually has to mostly know what he’s doing, and he’s lived this long, so.”

“Would he be flattered at this assessment?” Triss asked, laughing a little.

“No,” Eskel said, “in fact he was really annoyed through the entire conversation. But he also was excited about teaching, so we figure, what’s the harm?”

“Geralt’s double-mutated?” Ciri asked. “What does that mean?”

“Yes,” Triss said, “what does that mean?”

Eskel grimaced as he considered how to explain that. “Oh. Ahh, well… He made the mistake of doing too well on the Trial of the Grasses, so they made him do it twice.”

“What does that mean?” Triss asked. 

“The mutagens,” Eskel said. He grimaced, shook his head. “It’s. Awful. Kills most of the candidates. I think it took me a full week to be able to sit up, speak, eat--” He shook his head again. “Geralt was up and about in twelve hours.”

“So they repeated it,” Triss said, frowning.

“Not just repeated it,” Eskel said. “There’s a procedure, with-- worse things.” He paused, and drank more of his wine. “That time it took Geralt ten days to so much as recognize me. Almost two weeks before he could sit up or speak more than a couple of words.”

“That’s awful,” Ciri said.

“It’s impossible to overstate how awful the Trials were,” Eskel said fervently. “Ciri, I know you’ve been disappointed there’s no possibility of-- but I would-- I would rather die than see _anyone_ \--” He trailed off, and composed himself, taking a breath and looking down into his wine cup. “At any rate, it means Geralt’s got better reflexes and can take more damage than any of the rest of us, including Vesemir.”

“I didn’t know that,” Triss said quietly. 

Eskel drained the rest of the wine from his glass, and set it down carefully. “Stripped all the color out of him,” he said. “But he lived. Three of us lived, out of the seven we started with.”

“Lambert?” Ciri asked.

Eskel shook his head. “No, he’s much younger,” he said. Then he sighed, and tilted his head as he did the math. “Okay, not that much. Seemed like a lot at the time. He turned up sometime after Geralt and I both set out on the Path, but not long after. He’s probably ten years younger than I am, which is nothing now, but.” He shrugged. “No, the third was named Gweld, and he died a little later.” 

Triss stood up and came back with another bottle of wine, and wordlessly refilled Eskel’s cup. 

“This isn’t very cheerful talk, for a party,” Ciri said. 

“People don’t generally invite Witchers to parties,” Eskel pointed out. 

“Ah,” Ciri said, “now I know what we need to do-- it’s my turn to give _you_ lessons.”

“Oh?” Eskel said. 

“Etiquette lessons,” she said, with grim satisfaction, and Eskel steeled himself, and took a rather deep swig of wine.

“I’m ready,” he said. 

___________

Geralt summoned his nerve with the aid of a few sips of White Gull, and then initiated the connection with the megascope. He hadn’t let on that this was what he was doing tonight, and Eskel had kept shooting him looks like he wanted to corner him about something, but then Eskel had vanished somewhere, so there was no hope of being talked out of this. So he just had to do it.

He wasn’t even sure what he was hoping. Maybe Yennefer would reject the connection.

She didn’t, though; the thing lit up, and he immediately sent the recording Triss had made so he wouldn’t be tempted to just push the connection through and see her.

(He did want to. He wanted to see her. Was that his own desire? He thought so, he really thought so, but there was an edge to it, an edge like addiction, and that felt like it was the djinn. He didn’t know, though. He just didn’t.)

He didn’t know how he was going to ask her to let him talk to Jaskier. He wasn’t sure how that would go over. She had to know he was worried. She’d pick up right away on what he meant by it, too. There was no graceful way to approach any of this. 

The recording had sent, so he closed the connection and sat and waited, and restricted himself very carefully to only one more sip of the White Gull. He’d poured himself a generous three fingers of it, and that was as much as he should have if he didn’t want a hangover, and he wasn’t going to have any more, and he’d better save some for after the call was over, or if she didn’t call back. 

Oh, how long should he sit here? What if she took time to record a reply? What if she took time to think, and then to record one, and only then sent it? He might have to sit here a while.

He got up and paced around, not really seeing most of the things in the room. He was making himself frantic, so he went through the door into Ciri’s bedroom and stood there for a few moments. It was cold and dark, of course, because she was with Triss, not here, but it smelled of her, just a bit, and he breathed in, out, in, and then went back into his own room.

The megascope flickered. Connection. He accepted the connection, and Yennefer fuzzed into view, life-size, monochrome, looking impeccable, her hair loose in waves, bodice glittering with brocade. “Geralt,” she said.

“Yennefer,” he said, with some difficulty. There she was. She was always smaller than he thought; in his memory, she was tall, substantial, but he knew she wasn’t, he knew he could put his hands almost entirely around her waist, he knew he could hold her easily. Fuck, now he was thinking about her body. That wasn’t good. That wasn’t what this was about. 

“Is it really me you want to talk to,” she said, tossing her hair back a little, “or is it Jaskier, truly? You want to ask him if I’ve hurt him or trapped him, don’t you?”

Geralt stared at her, and finally said, stupidly, “I don’t know what I want.”

“Oh. Do you want me to tell you what you should want?” she asked. “Is that what this is about?”

“No,” he said. He had put a chair in range of the megascope, so he sat down in it. “I. I don’t know. Why, _have_ you hurt him or trapped him? Is that what you want me to ask about?”

“How are you?” she asked pleasantly, with a bit of an edge to it. “How’s Cirilla? How are you holding up?”

“I’m in over my head,” Geralt said, equally edgy-pleasant. “Triss is very nice and getting along beautifully with Ciri, and it’s all going quite well on that front, but I don’t know what the hell I’m really doing, and underneath all of it, I have no way of knowing whether the Brotherhood of Sorcerers is going to decide they should side with Nilfgaard after all and come for Ciri.”

Fuck, White Gull made him _wordy_.

“You don’t trust Triss?” Yennefer asked, tilting her head with some interest.

“I trust Triss to follow her conscience,” Geralt said, “which is lovely, but I have no way of knowing whether that aligns with what I desperately need to happen, and I can’t blame her for that but I also can’t not worry about that.”

“That’s... fair,” Yennefer said, seeming surprised. 

“I understand that she’s here at your behest,” Geralt said, “and of course you trust her implicitly, and I have no quarrel with that either, but I would like to humbly remind you that I don’t actually know whether you’ve decided that you and I are friends or enemies, and I wouldn’t blame you for either, but again, I also can’t not worry about that.”

“It sounds like you’ve been doing some soul-searching,” Yennefer said. 

“If that’s what you call it,” Geralt said. He sighed, scrubbed his hands down his face, and leaned back in the chair. “I’d call it fretting, mostly, for all the good it’s doing.”

“I really thought you were going to try to impress me with how together you were through all of this,” Yennefer said, hands on her hips as she looked down at him. 

“I had my chance to impress you,” he said, “and if that didn’t do the trick, this isn’t going to.” He tilted his head to look up at her. “Anyway I have never been together about anything in my life, why should I start now?”

Something unreadable twisted her face. “I also had half-expected you to lead off with a pitch about me giving us another chance,” she said, “but maybe I wasn’t thinking that through.”

Geralt blinked up at her for a moment. “I don’t think begging you to take me back would do much good,” he said. “I rather thought the point was that you couldn’t trust your own judgement about me, and I don’t expect me trying to put any pressure on you would be helpful in that.”

“Hm,” she said. “That’s. Surprisingly fair of you.” She sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Wait there, and give me about, hm. Half an hour, and I’ll call you back.”

“Wait,” Geralt said, but she disconnected, and fuzzed out into nothing. He sighed, and slouched farther down in the chair. Half an hour. He looked over at his glass, and decided he was going to need to save that drink. 

So he took one small, sparing sip of it, then closed his eyes and set his internal time sense to give him thirty solid minutes of meditation, because it was the only way he was not going to fuss about it. He had no idea what Yennefer was doing and his imagination could easily present him with a thousand options, each worse than the last and it was fruitless. 

He roused out of meditation after twenty one and a half minutes, blinking in mild disorientation, because his medallion was buzzing at him as the megascope tried to activate. He sat up and accepted the connection, frowning. If it was someone else trying to contact Triss, he didn’t know what he’d do. 

But it was Yennefer. She looked… different, and it took Geralt a moment to realize she’d clearly been wearing an illusion before, and wasn’t now. She had a faint tracery of scars on her face and one of her irises was paler than the other, and her hair was pulled back in an untidy knot and she was wearing a much plainer dress than before. And now, instead of standing and looking forbiddingly down at him, she was sitting on something, a settee or the foot of a daybed or something like that.

“All right,” she said. “Since you weren’t a dick, I’m rewarding you.”

“Rewarding me,” Geralt said. 

“Is that all I am?” another voice said, and Geralt started upright. 

“Jaskier!” The bard stepped into the frame, and he looked-- better than last time, he’d shaved and his hair was clean and styled and he was dressed in something sensible but well-fitting. He smiled and waved, and sat down next to Yennefer.

“Hallo, Geralt,” he said. “You’re looking relaxed. You know, I couldn’t tell before, are you growing a beard?”

“I usually do, over the winter,” Geralt said, rubbing a hand over his offending chin. It was mostly grown out by now, and no longer itchy, so that was something. 

“Mm,” Yennefer said, “you think it’s attractive, don’t you.”

“It’s,” Jaskier said. “It’s not horrible.”

“Just envision it all full of guts as he eats a rabbit raw,” Yennefer said.

“Stop,” Jaskier said, shoving her. “No. You’re the worst.” He was laughing, sort of helplessly. 

“At least _you_ finally shaved,” she said, reaching over and tickling his chin like he was an animal she was petting.

He leaned into it, fluttering his eyelashes. “I, too, sometimes grow a Sadness Beard over the winter, but you’re spared this year by my late start.”

“Is yours a Sadness Beard, Geralt?” Yennefer asked. 

Geralt blinked at her warily. She and Jaskier were… they’d been friendly on the last one of these, too, seeming almost intimate in their demeanor to one another. “Sadness Beard,” he said, buying time. “That sounds like it’s got capital letters, but I don’t understand it. Mine’s a beard of _it’s cold out and I don’t want to shave_ , I don’t know how to capitalize that one.”

“It’s too nice to be a Sadness Beard,” Jaskier said. “Look, he’s tidied up around the edges of it.”

“I’m not, despite appearances, an animal,” Geralt said drily. “And, for the record, we’ve been cooking all our meat through since Ciri got here, for sanitary purposes and also because it tastes better that way and it’s not like we have to break camp early or something.”

“He’s even wearing, like, indoor clothing,” Jaskier pointed out. 

“I am,” Geralt said. “There’s no blood or guts on me at the moment either.”

“Oh wow,” Yennefer said. “So who are you trying to impress?”

“No one,” Geralt said. “I just live like this, when I have the chance.” He looked at his hands. “It’s even clean under my fingernails.”

“No,” Jaskier said, in overdramatic disbelief. Yennefer snorted a laugh, clearly not having quite prepared herself for his reaction, and then hit him lightly with the back of her hand. He elbowed her back, looking mock-innocent. 

Certainty crystallized in Geralt’s gut, heavy and bittersweet. They were genuinely friends, this wasn’t something Yennefer had set up to threaten Geralt with. He wasn’t quite sure whether they were lovers, but they were definitely friends. And that was good, but it also meant that neither of them really needed him. 

Jaskier was looking at him, and his mock-innocent expression faded. “So, Geralt,” he said. “Yennefer showed up just now, rather badly startling my academic planning meeting and also my Redanian intelligence surveillance detachment, and after a minimal explanation she dragged me through a portal to her secluded lair so that she could megascope you back, because she said you had surprised her by being less of an ass about this whole thing than she’d expected. She says you’ve figured out on your own that she’s not a monster holding me hostage.”

“I,” Geralt said, “yes, I can in fact see that.” He waved one hand slightly. “I can even see that she wears illusions for me but not you.”

Yennefer looked slightly stricken by that, and he could tell it was because she’d plain forgotten to put the illusion back up. Yes, she was more comfortable with Jaskier than she’d ever been with him. 

It stung, but it was a little comforting at the same time, he supposed. He took a sip of his drink and held it, burning, in his mouth for a moment before letting it wash pure heat down the back of his tongue. 

“Oh, why aren’t _we_ drinking?” Jaskier asked. 

Yennefer rolled her eyes slightly. “Because we don’t need to be,” she said. “You had probably better get on with it and tell him, Jaskier. Remember we decided I’d only be a dick about it?”

“Yes, yes,” Jaskier said, and Geralt sighed; that laid his last uncertainty to rest. 

“You’re fucking,” Geralt said. “Each other. What, am I going to be mad about it? I don’t own either of you.”

“Oh that was no fun at all,” Yennefer said. “You should have just let me do it.”

“Ah,” Jaskier said, “but now he’s going to convince himself we’re better off without him, and go sulk somewhere. Geralt! You promised to fuck me until I couldn’t talk, I’m not letting you off the hook. I’ve never been monogamous in my life, I’m not going to start now, but don’t you dare think for a second I’m done with you. I’m Ciri’s mother, remember? You won’t be rid of me, so you’d better stop sulking now.”

“I wasn’t going to sulk,” Geralt said, aware that he sounded sulky but not sure how not to. He set his jaw. It was fine, this was fine. As long as Yennefer was amusing herself, and not at Jaskier’s expense, which it didn’t look to be.

“Triss told you, didn’t she,” Yennefer said.

“You told Triss?” Jaskier yelped, and smacked her arm. “What?”

“You told _everyone_ ,” Yennefer said. “It’s in the dedication of the book you wrote!”

“It is _not_ ,” Jaskier said, wildly offended, as if that weren’t precisely the sort of thing he probably put in the dedications of all his books. 

“Triss didn’t tell me anything,” Geralt said, but now he felt even more like shit; Triss knew about this before him, and had been giving him those looks-- why, she hadn’t been upset, she’d been trying not to laugh at him. He sighed. He was certainly going to need more to drink, after this. Lambert had volunteered to work with Ciri tomorrow, and maybe Geralt would be hung-over enough to take him up on it.

“The whole story,” Jaskier said, leaning in conspiratorially, “is that Yennefer turned up here a while ago in disguise as you, so convincingly I only figured out it wasn’t you because I knew there was no way you’d abandon Ciri and show up in my bedroom. But she had-- Geralt, she had _every detail_ correct, down to the taste of your mouth.”

There was an odd flicker, and Yennefer disappeared from the image of the megascope, and an instant later she was replaced by-- an image of Geralt, only slightly larger and more heavily-muscled, a little more square-jawed, wearing slightly incorrect armor with little metal scales on it. The illusory Geralt leaned in slightly and glowered cartoonishly, and Jaskier turned his head slightly and then did a double-take.

“Sweet Melitele,” he said, and recovered himself with a laugh, “no, Geralt, but she looked-- she looked like you straight out of a bath, with bare feet and your hair down, and she smelled right, and it was really-- it was something.”

“And you slept with her,” Geralt said, resigned.

“No, I figured out something was wrong,” Jaskier said, wounded. “Give me _some_ credit.”

It was abruptly too much. “I don’t look like that,” Geralt said, annoyed, gesturing at the illusory-himself that was still fixedly glowering, like some sort of pantomime character.

The illusion flickered, and was replaced by a less-stern-looking version of himself, in the outfit he was wearing right at that moment, though he could see the fastenings were wrong and the trousers were much tighter than the ones he was really wearing. And she had him in his heavy road boots, probably because she couldn’t see his feet at this angle. But he still didn’t quite look right, swollen with exaggerated muscle and with his jaw far too square and clenched angrily.

“I wanted to find out,” the illusory Geralt said, with a voice like a thousand miles of gravel road with smoky campfires at irregular intervals, “what it felt like for someone to have real genuine feelings for you, and compare them to the ones that maybe I grew myself and maybe the djinn put there.”

“I don’t sound like that,” Geralt said, starting to be really annoyed. It wasn’t that he couldn’t take a joke at his own expense, but this was all rather a lot. 

“He doesn’t,” Jaskier said. “Yennefer, you can ease up a bit, it’s not _that_ funny. At any rate, I wanted to help her out, Geralt, and you know I’m a slut, so--”

“As long as it was what you wanted to do,” Geralt said, feeling weary down to his bones, and heavy with-- something. It was fine. He knew better than to involve himself with humans, and he’d spent twenty-something years now letting Jaskier get way too close to him, and this was probably the kindest ending to that. 

“I,” Jaskier said, a little exasperated, “no, Geralt, she didn’t _rape_ me. Look, I can _see_ you mentally writing this off, don’t you _dare_. Yennefer--”

The illusory Geralt sighed Yennefer’s sigh, and flickered, and was replaced by-- 

Oh, Yennefer naked, still with her hair in the messy knot, but her breasts gloriously bare, and she was wearing nothing but-- some sort of strapping, around her waist and hips, and-- there was a dildo sticking out the front of it, as if it were her cock, in exactly the right position, only it was comically enormous compared to her small frame. 

“This is what she actually looked like,” Jaskier said, “once I figured out she wasn’t really you, so I’d have possibly been insane to turn her away.”

“That’s,” Geralt said, mouth gone dry despite himself, “that’s quite a look.”

“It’s a perfect replica of yours, Geralt,” Yennefer said, tilting her head saucily and giving her cock a stroke.

“Please,” Geralt said, “I’m not _that_ ridiculous.”

Yennefer bit her lip, and looked at Jaskier, who pressed his lips together and tilted his head. “I mean,” he said. “I don’t know, Geralt, we never really-- I mean, I got to touch it, but that’s about all.”

“You saw it plenty,” Geralt said. 

“Get it out now,” Yennefer said, holding her tongue between her teeth enticingly. “Come on.” She tossed her head a little, which did fantastic things in the department of moving her breasts. It was extremely distracting. 

Geralt cleared his throat. “It’s hardly fair to compare,” he said. “If you’re breaking up with me by megascope, you can hardly expect--”

“This is the opposite of breaking up with you,” Jaskier said, exasperated. “We’re trying to have long-distance sex with you.”

“What, both of you,” Geralt said.

“No, no,” Yennefer drawled, bitingly sarcastic, “I was going to leave the room, that’s why I’m naked.” She stared at him a moment. “ _Yes_ , both of us! Geralt!”

“The point of the story,” Jaskier said, “was that she fucked me with your cock to explore the very deep and genuine feelings that I have for you, Geralt, so if I were going to break up with you it would be because I’m a fucking idiot. Like, even more than I actually am.”

“I have discovered,” Yennefer said, and she was still stroking her cock, and maybe in another minute or so Geralt _could_ make a fair comparison with it, because the visual was fantastic. He gritted his teeth and tried not to look. “That if you start speculating on all the ways it would be possible for both of us to fuck Jaskier, he gets rather excited.”

“Listen,” Jaskier said, “I am a man of very simple desires, and one of those desires is to get absolutely railed in every possible way by the pair of you, is that so wrong?”

“I don’t think I’m drunk enough for this,” Geralt said, and took another sip of his drink. He felt like he was missing something, somehow, and this didn’t make sense.

Yennefer moved behind Jaskier and pulled him over into her lap, hooking her chin over his shoulder and setting to work on the fastenings of his doublet with both hands. He tipped his head back to give her access, looking at Geralt under his lashes with his mouth slightly open. 

“You don’t have to be drunk,” Jaskier said, putting one hand up to caress the side of Yennefer’s face. She was looking at Geralt too, her lip between her teeth. “Geralt, I’ve wanted you for twenty years, and I believed for almost that whole time that you had no interest in me, and then you told me you’d wanted me the whole time, and murmured some really promising stuff in my ear in the throes of passion, and then fucked off to a hidden fortress somewhere. The least you can do is get your cock out for me now.”

Yennefer peeled his doublet off him, and he sat up to let her do it, then collapsed back against her. She had unlaced his trousers now, and had her hand down well past the waistband in the front, her other hand groping across the front of his shirt and pulling it open as well. Jaskier had his thighs sprawled invitingly apart, and put his fingers into his red, red mouth; he clearly knew what he looked like and had calculated the effect and it was absolutely devastating to Geralt’s composure. 

“Look at you, you little slut,” Yennefer murmured to him, nosing along the edge of his jaw. “Beg for it. Come on, beg him for it.” She was moving her hand inside his trousers, and despite all being hidden by the stiff formal fabric, there was absolutely no doubt of what she was doing, or how hard he was. 

Jaskier tipped his head back even further, breathing hard. “Geralt,” he said, and it didn’t sound put-on at all, it sounded sincerely pleading. “Geralt, don’t say no. Don’t turn me down. Please.”

“I’m hundreds of miles away,” Geralt said, “what am I going to do?”

Jaskier shivered, and let out a really affecting little gasping moan. “Answer me,” he pleaded. “Say yes. Tell me what you’ll do to me. Touch yourself for me. Please don’t look away. _Please_ don’t-- leave me like this.” His shoulders curled inward, his face turning away, though he was still gazing unrelentingly at Geralt-- but his body language collapsed into shame, reluctance, one hand wrapping around each of Yennefer’s wrists as if to stop her. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt said, gritting his teeth. It was affecting him, a lot. 

“Geralt,” Yennefer said, softer than her usual. “We’re both sincere. I’m not doing this to mess with you, I’m doing it because I don’t dare open a portal directly to you right now. I will, Geralt. I _will_. But it’s too dangerous right now. This is all I can give you, for now. Won’t you accept it?”

She’d stilled her hands’ movement, and they were both staring at him pleadingly, the only thing moving in the frame Jaskier’s chest as he panted for breath. “Please,” Jaskier said again. He looked both wretched and debauched. 

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Geralt said. “Do you want my blessing? Go ahead, have sex with each other, neither of you belongs to me.”

Jaskier made a distressed little noise and closed his eyes. Yen sat forward slightly and said, “Geralt, I don’t want your permission, I want your participation.”

“I can’t participate,” Geralt said. “You’re all the way over there.”

“Get your cock out,” Yennefer said, her voice gone dangerous, “so I can _see_ it.”

“I,” Geralt said, but he didn’t know what to say to that. 

She opened Jaskier’s trousers the rest of the way, and Jaskier wriggled to allow her better access. In a moment, she had his cock out, in her hand, and Jaskier was biting his knuckles to stay quiet. His body language was still all conflicted, shame and desire all mixed-up together. 

“Gods,” Jaskier breathed, almost a whimper, “now I look like a complete whore.”

“You are,” Yennefer said, but she sounded fond. “Come on, Geralt, what would you do to him if you could touch him?”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to leave you to it?” Geralt managed, though it came out a little strangled. He was-- despite himself, he was completely unable to look away. 

“If we wanted to be left to it,” Yennefer said, “we’d be doing this without the megascope. We’re here because we want you.”

Jaskier shivered a little, jerking his hips, and his cock slid in and out of Yennefer’s fist so enticingly Geralt had to press the heel of his hand down against his own groin. 

“Fuck,” Geralt said, “I want to suck that.”

Jaskier gasped and almost came, and Yennefer grabbed the base of his cock hard to prevent it, just in time. “Ooh, you little slut,” Yennefer said in his ear, “you want that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Jaskier whimpered. “Gods!”

Yennefer looked at Geralt. “You like to suck cock?” she asked. It was a little challenging. He bit his lip.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Sometimes.”

“Do you like to get your cock sucked?” she continued. Somehow, in all their time together, she’d never done that-- well, he’d not been all that interested, because of the options presented, it was the least compelling. He liked giving more than receiving, but that didn’t mean he didn’t like both. 

“Yeah,” Geralt said. 

“Get it out for me,” she said. “Come on.”

It felt weird, and stupid, because really he was alone in a room, and it was bright in here because of the megascope, and he didn’t like being on display. “This thing isn’t recording, is it?” he asked nervously. 

“No,” Yennefer said, “unless you want it to. I can tell you how to make it do that, if you want.”

“ _No_ ,” he said. He couldn’t imagine anything he’d want _less_ than a recording of himself masturbating. He unbuttoned the waistband of his trousers, and opened the flies enough to get his dick out. “There,” he said.

“Stroke it,” she said. “Come on. You have to participate.” 

Jaskier had been lying with his head back against Yennefer’s shoulder but he was instantly paying attention again, eyes glinting as he watched Geralt awkwardly stroke himself. “Ohh, my,” he said, “yes.”

“Why don’t you show him, pet?” Yennefer said. “Show him what you’d do to him, if you were there.”

Jaskier made a fantastic, eager little noise and slid out of Yennefer’s lap, landing on his knees on the floor in front of her. Yennefer, meanwhile, flickered out of being herself and became Geralt, a mirror of how Geralt looked at the moment, though again it was an imperfect copy-- Yennefer clearly thought of Geralt as both taller and broader than he really was, his jaw squarer and his expression angrier. 

“Fuck,” Geralt said, as Jaskier delightedly grabbed ahold of Yennefer’s-- er, Illusion-Geralt’s-- dick, wriggling in between his spread knees to approach it. It was-- it was hot, but it was also off-putting to watch not-quite-himself put one enormous hand alongside Jaskier’s jaw and give him a predatory, sneering look. “I-- I can’t look at-- that’s not-- I don’t look like that.”

Illusion-Geralt looked at him, raising an eyebrow in a very Yennefer expression. “Oh?”

“I don’t look like that,” Geralt repeated. 

Jaskier looked up at Illusion-Geralt, looked down at Illusion-Geralt’s very clearly substantial, not-illusory, cock that he had in his hand, and then looked over at Geralt. “I can see how this would work better for me than for you,” he said, then looked back up at Illusion-Geralt. “Love, maybe you’d better get your tits back out.”

“I could be you instead,” Illusion-Geralt said, and there was a flicker, and then another Jaskier was sitting in the chair, dressed a bit more flashily than the real one on the floor. The real Jaskier laughed, and looked over at Geralt. 

“I don’t know if this is working for him either,” he said. “And I know how my reputation is but I don’t know if I can quite bear to suck my own cock.”

“I left the cock unchanged,” Illusion-Jaskier said, sitting back a little and spreading his legs a bit more. “Come on, pet, be a sport.”

“Mm,” Jaskier said dubiously, looking up at his face and then back down at the cock in his hand. “I don’t know. Is this working for you, Geralt?”

“Mm,” Geralt said. His erection had flagged a little, looking at his own face, and it wasn’t quite recovered yet. “Not sure.” He felt more confused than aroused, really, though he wasn’t… disinterested.

“You’re both so boring,” Yennefer said, and in a flash, was back to herself-- the version with no clothes on, and the dildo in the harness around her hips, lounging in the chair with her legs spread and her hand caressing Jaskier’s jaw. 

Jaskier made a happy little sound and immediately leaned in and took her cock into his mouth. “Okay, yeah,” Geralt said, “that’s-- I like that.”

“Mm,” Yennefer said, “I do too,” even though surely she had no sensation in the dildo, but she petted Jaskier’s cheek and watched him a moment, expression avid. “You’re so pretty, darling.”

“Mm,” Jaskier said, and he was really quite enthusiastic about things. 

Geralt’s erection had perked right up by now, and he bit his lip and gave himself a good squeeze. “Yennefer,” he said, “it’s not just your tits I miss, but--”

“They’re so nice,” Jaskier pulled off to say breathlessly. “They’re-- _so_ nice.” He gazed up at them for a moment, catching his breath, then turned his head and caught sight of Geralt, and bit his lip. “Okay, I want that, though.”

“Mm,” Yennefer said, and brought one hand up to fondle her own breasts. “It’s not just your cock I miss, Geralt, but I’m not going to lie, it is a really nice one.”

“It’s _reasonably-sized_ ,” Geralt said, “not like that monster you’ve got on.”

Jaskier pulled off again, stroking meditatively at the dildo, and turned his head to look at Geralt where he was also, well, okay he had just been giving himself a little squeeze now and then but he was, all right, just jerking off now. “I am afraid it’s impossible to compare at this distance,” he said, “but I am volunteering myself to be the impartial judge, at everyone’s earliest convenience.”

“Can you,” Geralt said, “at least, please, just for a moment, kiss Yennefer’s breasts. I don’t want them to be lonely.”

Yennefer laughed, and Jaskier obediently knelt up and buried his face between them. He kept his hand around her cock, stroking it purposefully as if it were really the main thing going on here, but he also dedicated a fair amount of attention to her breasts with his mouth and his hands, and she put her hands in his hair and did a reasonable amount of writhing in the chair. 

“Hnn,” Geralt said, because he wasn’t lying and really there were so many things to appreciate about Yennefer besides her breasts, but also her breasts were so perfect, magnificent and pert and soft all at the same time. 

Jaskier also, very generously, kissed Yennefer’s mouth, and she pulled him into her lap and made out with him for a little bit, kissing and caressing him, and wrapped her hand around his dick and worked him up into a fine state. But they both kept looking over at Geralt, long before it occurred to him to feel left out, and murmuring sweet things to him, or about him.

“Doesn’t he look delicious,” Yennefer said to Jaskier, pulling his shirt off over his head. He looked thin, Geralt noticed with some concern, but was unable to maintain the concern in the face of Jaskier’s open-mouthed, heavy-lidded regard. 

“I want to sit on his dick,” Jaskier said. “I want to take the whole thing.”

Geralt moaned a little, thinking about that. “And Yen could sit on my face,” he said.

“Might keep you busy,” Yennefer said. 

“I could find something to do,” Geralt said. “Keep me out of trouble.”

“Do you like getting fucked, Geralt?” Yennefer asked. 

Geralt shivered, caught a little off-guard by the question. “Yes,” he said, stirred to honesty by being way too aroused to think straight. 

“Would you rather take Jaskier’s cock, or mine?” she asked.

“Fuck,” Geralt said. “Either. Both. I don’t care. Fuck.”

“Clearly we’re going to have to spend some time at this,” Yennefer said. “Obviously it’s not possible to do everything at once. Oh, what about--”

“Yennefer is far too coherent,” Geralt said. “Jaskier, do something about that.”

“Mm,” Jaskier said, and slid out of her lap to his knees again. But this time he pushed her thighs farther apart, and pulled one up over his shoulder; he teased her cock with his mouth and stroked it with his hand but then slid his hand down further, behind and under it, and began to work at her cunt with clever fingers. 

“Oh, you--” Yennefer said, and then bit it off and let out a little cry. Jaskier very obviously had done this to her before, because it took him almost no time to get straight to the point with her. “Fuck,” she said, “oh, you little--” and she tipped her head back and gasped as she came, writhing. 

“Fuck,” Geralt said, “oh fuck, yes, gods, how does she taste?” He was close now too, watching-- ah, Jaskier was so good at this he set her off again before she’d finished the first time. He was just using his fingers; his mouth was still on her cock, and he had managed to find an angle where he could occasionally shoot Geralt extremely heated, heavy-lidded looks in the midst of everything. 

But at Geralt’s question, Jaskier pulled off her cock and dove in, burying his face between her legs and redoubling his efforts. She put both hands in his hair and held on, shuddering as she came again, or still-- and again-- her voice gone wildly hoarse. 

It took every bit of self-discipline Geralt had not to come, watching her shuddering in helpless transports of ecstasy, but little as he knew about the etiquette for this sort of situation, he thought it would be rather cruel to Jaskier to finish when the other was too busy to look. So he gritted his teeth and held off as long as he could, and finally Yennefer shoved Jaskier away. 

“Let me breathe, you monster,” she panted, and he licked his mouth hungrily, gazing up at her in a lust-glazed haze, and kept working his fingers so that she shuddered over the edge again, arching her back and crying out. “Fuck,” she gasped, “fuck-- Jaskier--”

“I need you to come,” Geralt said to Jaskier, ragged and hoarse. “I need-- come on.”

“Fuck,” Jaskier hissed, and Yennefer grabbed him, pulled him into her lap, bit his neck and grabbed his dick, working it with firm assurance in her hand. He made a wonderfully affecting, desperate little noise, jerked his hips up into her grasp, and then cried out, shuddering as his cock jerked in her hand. “Fuck,” he gasped, and let his head fall back as he came all over her hand, shooting as far as her belly. 

“So messy,” she said approvingly, and kissed him, sweetly, then raised her hand to his mouth. “Clean that up, won’t you?”

Jaskier opened his mouth and sucked on her fingers, then recovered enough to open his eyes and look at Geralt. Yennefer took the cue of his gaze and turned to look too, and said, “Are you waiting for us to watch?”

“I,” Geralt said. He was right on the edge, to the point that it was torture, but it had seemed wrong to just finish himself off. “Hnn. Fuck.”

“It’s all right,” she said, “we’re watching now. Such a good boy, waiting for us.”

A shiver so intense it was almost painful went down Geralt’s spine, and he moved his hand, just a little, edging himself a little closer. 

“Oh fuck,” Jaskier said, sounding drunk, “ _fuck_ , I want you to come on my face.”

That mental image was too much, and tipped the balance; Geralt choked off far too sharp a shout and came all over himself. 

“So good,” Yennefer crooned. “So good. Look at you. Oh, look at you.”

Geralt groaned, letting his head fall back against the back of the chair; he’d come so hard he was a little dizzy with it. 

Jaskier sat up, grabbing Yennefer’s wrist to lick her hand more effectively clean, and Geralt watched dazedly. “Fuck, that was hot,” Jaskier said.

“Mm,” Geralt said, blinking as he tried to summon any kind of self-possession.

“I wish I could touch you now,” Jaskier said quietly, sitting forward a little, still in Yennefer’s lap. “The sex is one thing but afterward-- I want to touch you and pet you and tell you how good that was.”

Geralt sat motionless, feeling both heavy and floaty in the chair. “Mm,” he said. He should clean up, he’d kind of made a mess. He wasn’t actually terribly fond of masturbating, it tended to make him feel empty afterward, but this was a little bit different. He smiled at Jaskier, knowing it was a bit dopey, but Yennefer could laugh at him if she wanted, he wasn’t really worried about it. “It was good.”

Yennefer gently put Jaskier’s clothes to rights, petting him like a prized pet. “I can’t just make a portal willy-nilly to you,” she said to Geralt. “There are good reasons I’ve stayed away. And Nilfgaard is watching everything I do, and especially taking note of places I open portals to. When Triss came to you, I simultaneously opened portals in a dozen other places, so they wouldn’t know where she’d gone, if they’re tracking portals.”

“I hadn’t realized,” Geralt said, and sat up a little, cleaning himself up and putting his clothes to rights. 

“She and I are collaborating on a number of other countermeasures,” Yennefer said. Jaskier was clearly sleepy, and she was holding him in her arms as if he were a child, almost, letting his head rest against her shoulder. It stood to reason she was the most collected of them, that was just how she was. For all his growled promises to Jaskier, he’d never been able to render Yennefer nonverbal by any feats of sexual prowess, and knew better than to try. “And I’m rather involved in making sure Nilfgaard doesn’t get ahold of Jaskier. They want Ciri badly, even more so than can be explained either by her ancestry or her status as a Source or conduit. They know something I don’t.”

Geralt nodded thoughtfully. “I see,” he said. “Any ideas what that could be?”

“Not so far,” Yennefer said. “But we’re working on it.” 

“I can’t believe you two are-- were you always like this after sex?” Jaskier demanded. “No afterglow, just on to plans?”

Yennefer laughed at him, but sweetly, pushing his hair across his forehead with her thumb. “Sometimes I just fall asleep,” she said, “you know that.”

“ _Usually_ I just fall asleep,” Geralt said, which wasn’t really true, but he’d like it to be. He supposed it wasn’t new news that Yennefer and Jaskier had fucked often enough that she’d fallen asleep on him, so he tried to suppress the pang that made him feel. 

“At any rate, we’re trying to keep _you_ safe, you goose,” she said, and kissed the side of Jaskier’s head in a shockingly fond gesture. She had been many things with Geralt, but he had never seen her look _fond_ like that. “Nilfgaard thinks they can use you to find Geralt and thus find Ciri and we can assume that what they’d do to you would not be something you’d enjoy.”

“I am aware,” Jaskier said drily, going even more boneless in her grasp. He looked so deliciously relaxed, and Geralt could almost catch his scent, a teasing memory of how good he could smell, sleepy and open. He had a sort of sweet spice to his scent, naturally, under everything, and it was so familiar Geralt could just imagine it. But it wasn’t real, there was nothing to smell but himself, his own death-tinged stink.

He sighed, and collected himself-- there it was, there was the inevitable post-masturbation melancholy. That was why he didn’t do it. “Well,” he said, “keep me posted, I suppose. I should let you go, and give Triss back her megascope.”

“I have to get back to work,” Jaskier said, sitting up with a groan and sliding gracefully off of Yennefer’s lap. “You snatched me right out of a meeting that I wasn’t at all enjoying but really ought not to have abandoned.”

Yennefer sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. She sat forward a bit, reaching toward the megascope. “So, Geralt, how about this-- I’ll try to find a time Jaskier has a couple of days free, and Triss had asked me to portal her some supplies, so I’ll set up the many simultaneous portals thing again and send Jaskier through to you for, oh, a couple to a few days, however long he can spare, and then Triss and I will set up another portals set and bring him back when he has to get back here for whatever he’s working on.”

“Would it be safer if he stayed here?” Geralt asked gently, looking at Jaskier. 

Jaskier looked regretful. “Probably,” he said, “but I have obligations until late in the spring. Anyway, I think I’m a valuable distraction-- some of them are working so hard trying to get to me that they’re not working on finding you.”

Yennefer looked at him quizzically. “Where did you hear that?” 

Jaskier looked innocent now. “I hear things,” he said. He smoothed his hand down the front of his shirt. “But, yes, I can get maybe three days together off from my various obligations, and would be delighted to spend them in the, er, wherever you are.”

“Bring cold weather gear,” Yennefer said. “Triss wants me to coordinate with someone to send the rest of her furs from her house, among other things. So you ought to gather up whatever you have.”

Jaskier made a face. “I don’t do a lot of outdoor trekking,” he said, “but I have some woolens, I guess.”

“You’ll just have to spend your time in Geralt’s bed,” Yennefer said. “If he has one, and doesn’t just sleep on the ground.”

“I have a bed,” Geralt growled. “I’m not an animal, I _live_ here.”

“Anything else I should bring?” Jaskier asked. 

Geralt shook his head. “Only whatever you’ll want,” he said. “And it’s not _that_ cold here. Only if you’re doing outside work.”

“Triss indicated that some of the indoors was more or less outdoors,” Yennefer said.

“Well, not all the roof survived,” Geralt admitted. “But the important rooms are intact. And Eskel spent all morning baking bread in the perfectly functional kitchen. And Ciri misses you.”

Jaskier tilted his head, face going still, caught by that last detail. “Of course,” he said quietly, and then smiled. “How could I pass up a chance to see the fabled Witchers’ Keep? I’ll have to wait to compose any ballads about it, but it seems like something to see, all right.”

“I’ll set it up with Triss,” Yennefer said. “We’ll keep you posted, Geralt. Good night.”

Jaskier blew a kiss, and the megascope image flickered out as Yennefer rattled off the incantation. Geralt sat in the sudden dark, feeling very cold, but thought about whether he had enough blankets and whether he couldn’t do a better job at fixing the chinks in the window of this room. The rest of his glass of White Gull was plenty to take the coldness away and let him sleep.


	10. Vibration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: None in particular, but quite explicit m/f sex.

Eskel had collapsed with great exaggerated dramatics onto a chair after the last lesson on courtly dances, and Ciri had flopped down onto the settee. Triss was making herself unavailable for dancing lessons by tidying the room, so it was a moment before she noticed that it had gone quiet.

(Ciri had made her partner Eskel for a dance, and while she did like to dance, there was a bit too crackling a tension between them for her to be able to keep her expression entirely controlled, with Eskel’s broad hand spanning most of the back of her waist, and her hand on his shoulder feeling the warmth of all that taut muscle through the thin layers of his shirt and the diaphanous silk of the over-vest. She’d had to make her excuses rather promptly.) 

Triss leaned over to look at Ciri’s face, and Eskel shook his head sharply. She turned to look at him instead. 

“She’s asleep,” he whispered, barely audible. 

Triss nodded, and picked up one of the fur blankets slung over the back of the chair next to her fireplace. She came and lay it gently over Ciri, careful not to disturb her.

She turned and looked at Eskel, and beckoned to him. He frowned in perplexity, then eased silently to his feet and followed her as she walked backward out of the room into the adjoining room, which was her bedroom, and very gently and quietly pushed the door shut, then let her breath out. “Finally,” she said. 

He laughed softly. “Poor thing,” he said. “Do you think she’s had enough fun?”

“I was worried she’d slept too long today and wouldn’t sleep tonight,” Triss admitted. “After I’d agreed to keep her in my care tonight I realized I might have signed up for more than I meant to.”

“She’s not a baby,” Eskel said.

“No, but she’s had such a rough time of it,” Triss said.

He sighed, and leaned against the wall next to the door, looking a bit wistful. It was dim in here, dim enough that Triss couldn’t really see his scars, and for a moment she could see what he must have looked like before, as a young man. He really was quite good-looking, with a square jaw and a straight nose and a generous mouth. Actually, he resembled Geralt, somewhat, in the shape of his jaw and the overall proportions of his face. She wondered if they were in truth related, or if it was coincidence. Their coloring was entirely different, Eskel had olive skin and black hair while Geralt was very fair, but she’d had occasion to wonder if Geralt’s coloring were natural at all.

“She has,” he said. “Poor kid.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose I can take the flower crown off, yet, in case she wakes up.”

Triss laughed, and stepped in closer to remove it. He was tall enough that she had to lean in close and stand on her toes to lift it off his head. “You’ve been a very good sport about it,” she said. 

In the dark, after this much wine, he smiled with both sides of his mouth; she’d wondered if the scars were deep enough to cut the muscles under the skin on that side of his face, but she could tell now that it was just that he avoided moving them too much when he was thinking about it. They did tend to twist his expression, she could understand it, but she was used to it now; his lip was notched enough that in repose it showed the teeth on that side, but it wasn’t a snarl if you knew him. “What kind of a person would I be if I wouldn’t wear a flower crown for my--” He hesitated, wrinkling his nose in the kind of expression he’d never pull in daylight. “I guess she’s my niece. Is she my niece?” He shrugged. “It’s not like I have a lot of family, for that to get old.”

“No,” Triss said softly, looking up into his face. 

He went still, suddenly realizing how close she was to him, and that energy was back between them, like from the dancing, like from when he’d put his hand on her waist earlier to brush the flour off. He took a breath sharply, then let it out. “Triss,” he said. 

She put her hand on his shoulder, close to his neck. “I think,” she said softly, “that maybe I’d like to know you better, Eskel.”

His eyes had gone wide, the pupils wide and round in the dim light. “I, uh,” he said. “How much better were you thinking?” He sounded almost alarmed, and she hesitated a moment. Had she misread him? He certainly hadn’t seemed disinterested. She’d sort of assumed this had been his ulterior motive all along, but he looked completely bewildered. 

“Er, well,” she said, “I mean, I suppose as well as you want me to.”

He swallowed nervously. “Um,” he said, then pressed his mouth closed and set his brows in a resolute expression. “Please, uh, forgive how, um, awkward I am but. Are you flirting with me or not?”

“I,” Triss said, nonplussed, “yes, Eskel, I am.” She considered her next words carefully. “I’m interested in pursuing some kind of relationship with you.” It took a bit of courage to continue, “But if you don’t want that, it’s all right--”

“No,” he said, grabbing her wrist as she started to pull her hand away from his shoulder. “No, I-- I’m interested in-- that! I just-- uhh, how do I say this so I don’t sound ridiculous?” He was making a grimace of some kind, which was truly fearsome but Triss could see from the angle of his brows that he was just uncertain, not furious. “Ah, people don’t-- that’s not--”

“You don’t have a lot of experience with people flirting with you,” Triss said, for him. Good heavens, was he completely naive? This might be more work than she’d forseen.

“Well,” he said. “It sounds dumb when you say it like that, but, yeah.” He made what she guessed was probably a wry face. “People want to fuck me but not-- nicely. You’re going about this a lot more nicely than I’m used to.” He hadn’t let go of her wrist but at least he wasn’t holding on so tightly as his initial grab. His expression shifted suddenly to one that was most likely horror. “I mean-- not that-- not that I think you want to fuck me but-- pardon my crudeness, I wasn’t--”

“It’s okay,” she said, reassured. “I do, Eskel, but that’s not the only thing I’m after. I like you and I want to spend some time with you, that’s all.”

The trick to parsing his expressions was to watch his eyebrows and eyes, because the scarring mostly just affected his mouth. His eyebrows now drew together in uncertainty. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Yes. I’d like that.”

“You’re allowed to touch more than my arms,” Triss prompted gently. 

Eskel huffed out a quiet laugh-- she was delighted to see he was still moving both sides of his face, so his smile was twisted but used his whole face-- and let go of her wrist, putting his hands on her waist instead. “Better,” she said, and stepped in. 

He was satisfyingly enormous; she really hadn’t thought she would like that but there was a certain thrill to being able to tuck herself up against him and have so much room to spare. She slid the hand on his shoulder over to his neck, and put her other hand on his chest. “If you want to keep the outfit, that’s all right, but--”

“I don’t think it goes with the rest of my wardrobe,” he said.

“Doesn’t really suit your usual aesthetic either,” she put in. 

“Prone to tangling,” he said, “not really suitable for sword-work, and if I cast an _Igni_ the whole thing would go up and I’d be in trouble.”

“Do you have a Sign that puts out fires?” Triss asked, starting to untie the waist sash she and Ciri had improvised for him.

“No,” he said. “There’s a variant of _Igni_ you can use to extinguish little things like candles but it doesn’t work very well for bigger stuff. And you can try _Aard_ , sort of, but it mostly knocks things over, so if the thing on fire is something I want to not be squashed, I have to think of something else.”

“No Sign for water,” she mused.

“No,” he said. She pulled the sash off entirely, dropped it onto the bench where she’d left the flower crown, and Eskel wriggled his massive shoulders out of the sleeve holes of the vest so that she could take it and throw it onto the bench too. 

She stepped back in and ran her hand delicately along his flank, up to his chest, feeling the warmth of his body and the tautness of muscle through his shirt. “Hmm,” she said, pulling herself into his space and looking up at him. He put his hands around her waist again, and she felt a pleasant little thrill at how big and capable his hands felt. 

He examined her face with something like wonder. Maybe trepidation, too. He didn’t trust her motivations. She felt an unpleasant pang, wondering what series of experiences had made him doubt his own worth as a person, had made it so unimaginable to him that someone might just be interested in him for himself.

“If it were just a little darker in here, you wouldn’t have to look at my face,” he said, with a funny bittersweet little laugh that didn’t move the damaged side at all. 

“Why wouldn’t I want to look at your face?” she asked, mildly shocked. He grimaced skeptically, and she reached up to trace the intact side of his face from cheekbone to jawbone. “I rather like your face.” When he didn’t flinch, she brought her other hand up, and gently cradled the damaged side, taking care not to catch the scars too much, just keeping her fingers curved to the general contour of his face. “All of it. It just takes a moment’s getting used to, Eskel.”

He’d tensed a little, but didn’t pull away. “That’s more or less what Geralt said,” he admitted after a moment, some of the resistance going out of his body. “But, well. Most people don’t take the moment. And even before the scars most of them already thought I was a monster.”

“Well,” Triss said. “I know you’re not.” She kept her hands on his face, looking him over solemnly. “Can I kiss you?”

His eyebrows twitched toward one another, and he squinted dubiously. “Really?” he said.

“Yes, really,” she said. “Eskel! Does nobody kiss you?”

He looked shiftily sideways. “Not many people,” he said. He made a face. “There are-- of the people who are interested in me, most of them are interested _because_ I’m a monster, and it’s only a small subset of those who want-- that sort of thing.”

Triss tilted her head. “I actually do get a fair bit of that, as a mage,” she said. “Was that a yes, though?”

That made him let out a startled laugh. “Yes,” he said, and she rocked up onto her toes to press her face gently to his.

He kissed sweetly, and like someone with a reasonable amount of experience at kissing. Yes, his torn lip was noticeable, but no, the muscle of his lip still moved fairly normally, and his mouth slid against hers with a thrilling soft pressure. He was solid to lean against, and tightened his grip to hold her, bending his neck so she could put her heels back down, tilting his head to kiss her a little deeper. It was a good kiss, once it got started, and she made a pleased little noise as his mouth opened, tasting faintly of her wine. 

He really turned it on then, his tongue teasing at her teeth and then moving past, curling gently and coaxingly until her knees felt a little shivery and a tingling coil of lust unfurled in her midsection. 

No, he wasn’t naive, nor was he inexperienced at kissing. She came up for air eventually with a little gasp, and steadied herself against his chest. He blinked down at her, hands firm around her hips, and she licked her lower lip and collected herself a little. “I like what I’ve learned so far,” she said. 

“Gonna get a kink in your neck at this angle though,” he said, and she’d thought of that and was already pushing him down to sit on the trunk at the foot of her bed. He grinned at her, biting the undamaged part of his lower lip, and she climbed up into his lap so she could look down at his face, cradling his jaw in her hands and tracing his eyebrow with her finger. He really did have very handsome features, he had been quite a looker before the scars had marred him. She wondered how long ago it had happened. For that matter, how old was he? He might be older than she was, and it had been quite a long time indeed since she’d been with anyone older than herself, or even close in age. 

She didn’t want to ask any of these questions. She wanted to know things about him that one wouldn’t tell in words.

He’d settled his hands around her hips, holding her easily; his awkwardness did not extend this far. He clearly knew what to do physically, it was just social questions that baffled him, and now that her intentions weren’t ambiguous he seemed not to be having much trouble keeping up. 

He looked almost wistful. “You’re awfully pretty,” he said. 

“I was all right before Aretuza transformed me,” she said; it was sort of an old point of pride for her, but also a way to remind him what she was. Not that he likely needed the reminder. “These scars will keep fading, though,” she added apologetically. 

“They’ve faded since you got here,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be keeping tabs, but. It’s the sort of thing I notice.”

Greatly daring, she ran a finger along his face next to the outermost of his scars. He looked up at her, but she couldn’t read anything in his expression. “I don’t know if I could do anything for these,” she said. “Would you want me to? I could find out.” He didn’t say anything, so she went on, “Mine, I started as the wounds were healing. These are… older.”

“I don’t think I need to change how I look,” Eskel said. “I don’t think it would change what I am. I might as well look like what I am.”

This had not been an ideal conversational tack to take, Triss thought regretfully, so she leaned in and took his mouth with hers, since that had been going well. It seemed to salvage things; he tightened his grip on her waist and got into things again, and in relatively short order she was panting and grinding herself down into his lap, thoroughly aroused. She couldn’t quite tell if he were in a similar state, but he was tugging on her hips to direct where she was putting her weight a bit, in a fairly intent fashion, so she suspected he was.

She came up for air, and pulled back a bit to tug at his shirt until she found the hem and could put her hands inside it, against his skin. He was only moderately hairy, and otherwise his skin was smooth, very warm, and heavily seamed with scars. He also had very little fat under his skin, and with only a little pressure she could feel the hard layer of muscle, everywhere. He looked stocky and comfortable in his normal gear, but the reality was much leaner and harder than she’d expected. 

“I don’t know if you wanna take that off,” he said. “I got even uglier scars under there.”

“My ugliest scar,” she said, “is in here,” and unfastened the high neckline of her gown, pulling it aside to show the puckered scar still healing across her throat and down onto her chest. 

“Burn,” Eskel said thoughtfully, bringing a hand up to trace the edge of it gently.

“Yes,” she said. She unfastened more of her gown and pulled it aside, and then pulled the whole thing off over her head, leaving her in just her shift. “But it’s healed now, and the scar is fading.”

“Burns are the worst,” Eskel said, but he was looking appreciatively at her breasts. She untied the neck of her shift and let it fall open; the neckline was slit nearly to her waist, so she could get it on and off without mussing her hair, when she had hair.

“You could touch,” she said. 

He didn’t need to be told that twice, but moved his hands up from her hips to caress her. She twined her arms around his neck, and he pulled her close and kissed her breasts, nuzzling his way inside her shift. “Oh,” she said, arching her back to give him better access, “that’s-- yeah.” 

She had really only half-planned on this; she’d been toying with the idea ever since that morning, but she hadn’t decided whether she just wanted to flirt with him a bit or whether she wanted to actually tumble him, but his sudden recovery from sweet awkwardness tipped the scales. Her mind was made up now, and she was entirely committed to taking as many orgasms as he’d give her.

But, she supposed he wasn’t some stranger in a tavern, or someone fun at a party. She was going to have to look him in the face tomorrow, and the day after, and for potentially quite some time if it took that long to make meaningful progress with Cirilla. She made herself stop running her fingers through his hair-- softer and better-groomed than she’d thought-- and said, “Eskel, I think this is going to be a lot of fun but I just wanted to check in with you.”

He pulled his face out of her breasts with noticeable reluctance, and gave her a slightly dazed, disheveled look; his pupils were so wide his eyes looked like a normal person’s, in the dim light. “Check in,” he said. 

“Do you want to fuck?” she said. “And if we do that, is it going to be weird afterward?”

He blinked at her. “No,” he said. “I mean, no, it wouldn’t be weird afterward. Yes, I do want to fuck. If that’s what you want to do.” He wiped his mouth, and focused his eyes a little more alertly on her. “I won’t-- I mean, I don’t care what kind of fucking you specifically are after, really, but I feel like I should mention that not only are Witchers sterile, they also can’t harbor pretty much any of the diseases humans get from each other in bed, but I don’t want that to sound like a hint about the specific kind of sex I want to have with you because honestly I don’t have a preference.”

She laughed, delighted with him in general. “Oh Eskel,” she said. “Good. But sorceresses are sterile too, and we don’t generally catch diseases either. And while I have been known to fancy any number of exotic sex acts, over the years, I was more or less thinking of a reasonably traditional fuck. We could try the more, ah, gourmet stuff later, if all of this works out.”

“Gourmet stuff,” Eskel said. “Well, I’m going to be honest, I don’t tend to attract the kind of attention that leads to repeat custom, so that’d be pretty novel for me. I’m used to having to prove myself all in one go.”

“I mean,” she said, “I’m not averse to letting you start off with your best move. What do you usually wow people with?”

“Believe it or not,” Eskel said, “I got a good mouth. Plus, if you sit on my face, you don’t have to look at it.”

“I _like_ your face,” she protested, running a finger along his cheekbone, ignoring the scars. “But. It is an awfully long time since I had anybody--”

“Mm,” Eskel said, rumbling it low in his chest, “that won’t do. Please, let me.”

She laughed, and pushed herself up out of his lap. “Well, if you insist,” she said, and stripped her shift off over her head, which left her wearing only a pair of very tall woollen socks over a pair of even taller silk stockings gartered well above her knees, and her slippers, little wool-lined sheepskin ankle boots. Warming charms were all well and good, and insulation charms even better, but Kaer Morhen was fucking cold and she was a delicate fucking flower: the socks were staying on. 

Eskel made another rumbling sound, this time appreciative. She jerked her head at him, indicating that he should come over to her bed, and climbed up the set of steps into it-- it was a good, high bedstead, a solid frame with posts and a tester to support a canopy, and among the things she’d done to make it nicer was to conjure herself an extra feather mattress and a heavy set of tapestry hangings for it. The feather mattress had made the bed tall enough she’d needed the steps, but fortunately they’d already been in one of the adjoining rooms, and had needed no more magical conjuring work done than a little dusting. “Take your boots off and stay a while,” she said.

He shed his shoes and climbed in, and she unfastened the tie-backs for the hangings so that they fell closed, and then used a little spark-spell to light the small lantern she kept in here. He was kneeling on the edge of the bed, still wearing his shirt and trousers, and looked around admiringly; the interior of the bed was rather larger than the exterior. It wasn’t, usually, but she’d made it bigger when she’d invited him in. 

“Nice little nest you have here,” he said, but there was something oddly wary in his tone. For some reason his hand was resting on the medallion at his neck. 

“I like to be comfortable,” she said. “Mm, take off your shirt, won’t you?”

“I suppose it’s only fair,” he said, and pulled the offending garment off over his head. It revealed to sight what she’d so enjoyed touching earlier, a pleasing expanse of well-built, muscular body, with a startling array of scars. His skin was warm, almost feverishly so, but he wasn’t flushed at all; from the scant information she’d been able to find on Witchers, this seemed to be normal. A slow heartbeat tempered the effects of fast metabolic processes, which meant they ran hot. 

“Mm,” she said, “that’s nice to look at.” She slid her hand along his flank, curling her fingers to coax him closer to her, and then sank down to lie back on the bed, tugging him down next to her. 

After that it didn’t take long for him to get properly in the spirit, running his hands over her body and progressing from gentle teasing touches to more purposeful ones. His hand found its way teasingly down between her legs, then moved with more sureness, and she sighed in pleasure as he set to work on her, figuring out how she liked to be touched. He didn’t roll over on top of her, though, didn’t press himself on her; he seemed keenly aware of how much larger and stronger he was, and very concerned that he not seem to be threatening or overpowering. Which was considerate of him, but slightly unfortunate, because Triss, having been a mage for a long time, was no longer at all frightened of a big strong man and kind of liked an assertive lover.

“You know, you can’t hurt me,” she said breathlessly, rolling onto her back. But he didn’t pursue, he just lay there watching her with a keen gaze and his mouth slightly open, intent almost like a predator. “You can manhandle me a little, it would be all right.”

“You want me to take charge?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“You could,” she said, making her tone diffident. 

“Hmm,” he said. “Should I just take what I want?” he said. 

That sounded promising. “Yes,” she said. 

He reached over and grabbed her. “Come here, then,” he said, and lifted her effortlessly, rolling her on top of himself. She laughed in delight-- he lifted her as if she weighed nothing. She expected him to hold her by the waist in his lap but instead he readjusted his grip and-- she gave a startled little shriek as he lifted her up and settled her down so that she was straddling his face. 

“Oh,” she said, bracing her hands on the headboard to balance herself. He gave her a heated glance, and then his wicked smile vanished from view as he pressed his mouth to her and set to work with his tongue.

“Oh,” she said again, deeper, and un-tensed herself somewhat, pressing down against him. “Oh!” It was so good, a sudden hot wet pressure, teasing and then intensifying, and pleasure shot tingling up her spine-- pleasure, and anticipation. 

She remembered in that moment that Ciri was sleeping in the next room, and also the conversation about Witchers having excellent hearing and to always expect eavesdroppers at any given time. This would not do, so she reclaimed enough of her balance to pry one hand off of the headboard, and cast a quick silencing charm to supplement the insulation charms on the bed-hangings.

As she cast the spell, two things happened simultaneously-- Eskel flinched, and something under her ass vibrated. “Sweet goddess,” she said, startling upward, and Eskel blinked up at her. 

“What are you doing,” he said.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Medallion,” he said. “Senses magic. Keeps going off because you keep doing mage shit. What are you doing?” His tone was very slightly exasperated.

“Silencing spell,” she said. “I don’t want eavesdroppers. What do you mean it senses magic?” She remembered the look on his face as he’d climbed up into the bed, though-- he’d definitely felt every charm she’d cast, she realized, and that would expect why Lambert had come to find her in the library with that expression. “You all can tell whenever I do anything,” she realized.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Eskel said. “Part of the job. Kind of important.” He looked apologetic. 

“It-- buzzes, like that?” she said curiously. “Every time?”

“More or less,” he said. She reached down to touch it, and he growled-- an actual growl, like an animal. “It’s really important and I never take it off,” he said, as she hesitated. 

“I won’t take it off,” she said. “I just want to touch it. Does it get hot?”

“No,” he said, hostility easing. “Sometimes it-- does other things. Mostly it just buzzes like that.”

“I wonder how it works,” she said. Cautiously, she reached down and touched it with a finger. It just felt like metal, as warm as his body. 

“If you’d rather do experiments,” Eskel said, looking resigned. 

“No,” she said, “I was enjoying-- actually--” 

He hauled her down again and went back to work, and she shrieked in delight, hanging on to the headboard for dear life. It didn’t take him long to work her into a fine state, shivering on the edge, but she couldn’t-- quite-- get there, and he kept her on the edge like that for a long, long moment, winded and trembling.

Suddenly he surged up, breaking her hold on the headboard and flipping her over onto her back before he dove his face in again and renewed his attempts, and the thrill of it was enough that she tipped over into a fantastic orgasm, shoving her hands into his hair and holding him in place as her legs trembled and twitched. She didn’t even know what noises her throat was making, what nonsense she was saying. 

He glanced up at her, glassy-eyed and delighted. “Yeah?”

“Fuck,” she said, as she finally could get enough breath to speak. “I understand why that’s your best move.”

He laughed. “It’s also my favorite thing,” he said. “So if I’m only going to get to do one thing--”

She laughed breathlessly, tangling her fingers in his hair affectionately. She was meaning to pull him up so he could lie on her and kiss her and they could move on to maybe taking his trousers off, but as he shifted his weight his foot pushed through the bed hangings and he shivered, and the medallion vibrated strongly against her thigh as it reacted to his foot’s contact with the layers of enchantments she’d put all through the bed hangings. “Agh,” he said, twitching ticklishly, and the medallion buzzed again as he hit the charms with another scrabble of his foot. This time, as he yanked his foot back, the medallion fell a bit higher on her thigh, high enough not to be really her thigh anymore, and she gasped at the strong vibration so near to her most sensitive parts. 

“Oh,” she said, “that’s,” and Eskel noticed her expression and bit his lip with a small huff of amusement overlaid on-- oh, that was an expression of concentration. He was going to-- 

Quite deliberately, he pressed the medallion right against her, the smooth back side of it directly against her clitoris, and then extended his foot again through the hangings, holding it with careful concentration right where the charms began. The medallion buzzed, a sharp warning burst and then a more gentle sustained vibration as he kept his foot pressed against the edge of the charm. It was an intense sensation and she twitched so violently that Eskel had to grab her hip to pin her down with his free hand. Which was just the sort of assertive thing she’d been wanting him to, and along with the strong buzzing as he ran his foot along the edge of the charmed barrier of the hangings, it quite set her off, and within a moment she was shuddering violently, toes curling as she shook through another orgasm. Abruptly it was too much.

“Ah gods, get up here,” she gasped, hauling at his hair and then his shoulders, “come here and _fuck_ me.”

“Yeah?” he said.

She shivered again, still riding out aftershocks, as he moved up to lie next to her. She wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him in to kiss him, while her other hand fumbled at his trousers-- he was still half-dressed, it was intolerable. 

It was the work of a moment and she didn’t even have to resort to magic to get his trousers off him. His thighs were spectacular, and his cock was also not in the slightest disappointing. For some reason he grinned and caressed her thigh down far enough to reach her socks. “These are staying, huh?”

“I don’t care how good the insulation charms are,” Triss said, “I don’t want my feet to get cold. Anyway they’re cute socks.”

“They are,” he said. 

“I want you on top,” she said. The way her thighs already felt, she didn’t want to be doing all the work.

“I’m heavy,” he said, and it wasn’t an unreasonable fear, but it was also sort of silly of him. 

“Firstly, I’m not that delicate, and secondly, do your elbows not work or something?” she said, and he laughed.

“Fair,” he said, and rolled over, the soft skin of his flank sliding warm and silky against the skin of her inner thigh. He kissed her with a lovely, soft sort of tenderness, gentle and searching. “Like this?” he asked, hesitating, glancing up into her face through the curtain of his disarranged hair.

“Fuck me,” she said, managing to stay just shy of impatience because of how earnest he was. But she was rewarded, as he slid into her, where she was so ready for him; he didn’t hurry but he didn’t hesitate either. She groaned in satisfaction as he filled her up, thick and hard and hot; her toes curled again. 

“That what you wanted?” he said, grinning. 

He was too composed, she thought; it was time to take him apart. She wrapped her legs around his back and arched her spine. “Come on,” she said, and rolled her hips to take him deeper. 

“As my lady wishes,” he said, which would have been smug except for how intently he was looking at her, breath coming fast between his parted lips. Also, he did what she wanted, and started moving in her. She’d already come a couple of times so there was no question of her not being ready for him, and he must be able to feel that, so his hesitance melted away and he started really giving her what she wanted. 

It didn’t take long for to get back up to where she’d been after his experimentation with the medallion; she brought her hand down and gave herself a little assistance with her fingers, but mostly she could get what she needed from his movements and the roll of her hips, and she clenched down tight around him and hung onto the back of his neck with her free hand. 

“Fuck,” she said breathlessly, “that’s nice, that’s what I want,” and he put his head down and kept moving. 

She wanted him to enjoy it, though, she wanted to see his pleasure, so she curled her fingers around the side of his face and by coincidence it was the side with the scars, because she was using her right hand on herself. He turned his head a little, pressing his jaw into her grasp-- she couldn’t tell if it was because he liked it or because he was being shy, but it meant mostly now she could see the unscarred side of his face. He looked young and vulnerable like that, and she could see now that he was starting to lose himself at little, eyes gone distant and a little glassy and skin flushed. 

She was losing the last of her composure as well, so she couldn’t devote much attention to watching him. She groaned, letting her head fall back so she could breathe harder, panting like she’d run a race, and he put his face down against her neck and breathed harsh and ticklish in her ear. Her body felt distant, a vague sense of vertigo as all her attention left its mundane duties of keeping track of where she really was in the world and focused instead on how fucking good his cock felt driving into her and lighting her up all the way in, hard and full and perfect. She lost her breath, pulled it in again, held it-- lost it again in a sharp groan as the sensation coalesced and shot up her spine in a hard tingling wash that wiped out everything else.

“Fuck,” she gasped, “fuck, Eskel, yes, fuck, _fuck_ \--”

“Yeah,” he said, and made a little sound like he’d been punched. His movements went ragged and unsteady and she clenched her inner muscles around him, wrapped her thighs tight around him, pulled him down into her with everything she had. It took him another disorganized, slightly desperate moment, but he grabbed her hips with almost bruising force and shook, hard, all over, and came in her with a quiet but intense punched-out groan. 

She made a satisfied noise, shook through a delightful little aftershock, and cradled his suddenly-heavy head on her shoulder. He was still partly braced-up, but most of his weight was on her, and she kept her legs wrapped around his waist and petted his hair. 

“Yeah,” she said, catching her breath. “Like that.” And kissed the top of his head.

He groaned softly. “Yeah okay,” he said. “I got the idea, I think.”

“Good,” she said. “So we could do that again sometime?”

“Yeah,” he said. After a long moment, he raised his head, and said, “But-- right now?”

She laughed, delighted. “Only if I didn’t want to be able to walk tomorrow,” she said. “Lie back down, you silly oaf, and afterglow with me.”

He made a noise that might have been a laugh, burying his head in her shoulder. “Okay,” he said. 

_______

Sometime in the middle of the night Geralt came to sudden wakefulness as his bedroom door opened. He lay perfectly still, breath suspended, as someone came through it. 

“It’s me,” Eskel whispered. 

Geralt sat up, at that. “What is it?” And then he caught the collage of sounds and scents that told him Eskel wasn’t alone. He smelled Ciri, but he smelled Triss, too, but he only heard one other set of lungs. 

“Ciri fell asleep at Triss’s,” Eskel said. “Was gonna put her in her own bed. She’s out cold. She was tired.” He walked through the room and opened Ciri’s bedroom door one-handed; Geralt could see him now. 

He didn’t just smell of Triss. He smelled of _sex_ and Triss. “Eskel,” Geralt said in surprise as he finished parsing the scents, but he’d disappeared through the door, and from the rustling sounds, was putting Ciri into bed. Ciri sighed, and made a little noise, but Eskel hushed her gently and she sighed again and rolled over, the bed ticking rustling under her weight. 

Eskel came out and closed her door. 

“You were out pretty late,” Geralt said, slipping out of bed to come stand in the room entryway.

“Yeah,” Eskel said. He walked back over to the room door. “I’ll tell you about it later, yeah?”

“Mm,” Geralt said. “Guess Coen was right.”

Eskel hesitated. “Guess so,” he said. He hesitated a moment longer. “How’d your… mega thingy go?”

“Mm,” Geralt said, “I’ll tell you later.” There was a slim chance Eskel would be able to catch a scent of what he’d been up to in here. Slim, though; he’d changed clothes. But even without the scent, his tone probably had given some of it away.

Eskel laughed softly. “A good night for you too?” he asked. Yeah, Eskel could read him like a book.

“Might be,” Geralt answered. He put out a hand and caught Eskel’s shoulder in the dark. Eskel leaned into it, a little, and there was just enough light that Geralt could see that he was grinning shyly.

“Goodnight, brother,” Eskel said.

“Sleep well,” Geralt told him fondly, and let him go and went back to bed as the door closed behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think @anoke gets credit for the idea of using a medallion as a vibrator? There was a conversation somewhere. Anyway-- I managed to get it to work, so ha!  
> ...  
> Sorry this update took eight thousand years. This lockdown is a thing. I don't get a lot of time to myself and when I do have it, it's incredibly hard to concentrate. And sex scenes take so much concentration and choreography, and I can't even tell if this one says what I wanted it to, but I've been working on it so long I just want it -- out, so. Anyway. Anyway! I made it! We made it! Here we are! I've been locked in this house with these kids for a solid month and nobody's died in this house so we're doing a lot better than most but Christ could the sun come out _one time_ , we're allowed to go outside but we can't because it's just above freezing and pouring down rain and has been doing so unrelentingly for a solid month.  
> But none of us are dead and that puts us way above a lot of people so I'll hang onto some gratitude for that.


	11. Policy Discussions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was going to write this as a missing scene but it amused me so much that I decided I'm going to just post it up as a chapter here in the main story.  
> This is Jaskier's POV on some previous events, namely, chapter 9.

“Listen up, you stupid fop,” Bowen said, and Jaskier paused at bay in the stairwell, crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head slightly, narrowing his eyes. “It’s my ass if you get snatched, you can’t just go running off anywhere you want.”

“And it’s my life,” Jaskier said, “so if I can’t go running off where I want to then you might as well put the manacles on me and bring me in.”

“Maybe I’ll do that,” Bowen said.

Jaskier held out his hands in front of himself. “If it’s worth what it’ll cost you, go ahead,” he said. He was sick to the fucking teeth of Bowen’s harassment of him. Bowen was a lieutenant in the Redanian Intelligence Service and thought that made him important. He was probably quite good at his job when it wasn’t this, but at the moment his job consisted largely of annoying Jaskier, and it was taking a great deal of self-discipline that Jaskier didn’t exactly have going spare to keep from deliberately making his job even harder than it had to be. 

He’d settled mostly for making the guy tail him to terribly disreputable places, but even that, he didn’t really have time for. It had been fairly entertaining to go to a brothel and book himself a half-hour massage in a room next to a man who was recreationally having himself caned, for kicks, just to know that Bowen was going to have to verify that it wasn’t Jaskier getting beaten. 

He hadn’t even gotten a sensual massage, just a normal one for shoulder tension-- it was a classy joint, though Bowen wouldn’t know that because while Redanian intelligence employed all kinds of people, Bowen happened to be a particularly stuffy one.

They’d had a young woman on the detail before but she’d unfortunately had to blow her cover when Yennefer had come to the performance session, and so she was long gone, alas. Jaskier missed not ever having noticed her, though he flattered himself he would now-- he hadn’t known to look for her then, but hadn’t stopped since he’d realized. 

“Oh, what will it cost me, Pancratz?” Bowen said, a bit scornfully.

Jaskier didn’t break eye contact. “Find out,” he said. 

“Is your Witcher going to come for me?” Bowen said, a bit sneering. 

Jaskier didn’t have to act; he was angry enough to clench his jaw at that. What a fucking prick. “‘ _My_ ’ Witcher is fucking _dead_ , asshole,” he said, using an exaggerated fingerquotes gesture to spin himself around and keep walking. That was his story and he was sticking to it no matter who asked, because he didn’t actually trust the Redanian Intelligence Service not to have moles reporting directly to Nilfgaard anyway. “Fuck you. You don’t have the clearance to know what it’d cost you.”

Which was true.

Jaskier spun Yennefer’s ring around with his thumb as the contemplated that. None of them really had any clearance at all, not really. 

Jaskier himself sure as fuck didn’t. He had only a little concrete information about what the fuck was going on. But he had some ideas. 

“Where are you going?” Bowen demanded, taking a couple of quick running steps to grab Jaskier by the arm. Jaskier dodged; he hadn’t spent twenty-whatever years on the road for nothing. He evaded Bowen easily, and came around with a glass pen in his hand that he jammed against Bowen’s neck as if it were a dagger. 

“Fucking _touch_ me,” Jaskier said through his teeth, “and next time I’ll put this _into_ you.”

Bowen had frozen, because he couldn’t see that it was a pen and it probably did feel like it was a dagger, and honestly it would be a great idea for Jaskier to be carrying a dagger, only he knew from experience that if you carried a weapon it was probably just going to get used on you anyway and he just didn’t have the training to keep that from being a problem. This sort of thing, though, he was good at-- brawls with whatever was to hand were more or less the totality of his combat experience. 

“I’m just doing my job,” Bowen grumbled.

“Your job does not involve putting your hands on me,” Jaskier said. “Nor, for the record, does it involve speaking directly _to_ me, ideally; you could compromise us both with this sort of nonsense. Kindly back the fuck off and let me go to my fucking committee meeting, because I don’t know if you realize this but the Redanian government isn’t paying me for any of this bullshit so I actually do have to work for a living.”

He palmed the pen and turned and kept walking, half-expecting Bowen to leap on him and beat him. He’d have no recourse at that point, because the pen was just a pen and he didn’t really have any other moves, but presumably Bowen didn’t know that. However, he had fortyish years under his belt of taking things as they came and figuring it out as he went, and it hadn’t always worked out but he was still alive so that had to be something.

There was a beat, and then Bowen’s footsteps came after him, but he wasn’t running. “They’re not?” Bowen said. 

“No,” Jaskier said. 

“Aren’t you a viscount or something?” Bowen went on.

“No,” Jaskier said, glancing back to grin at him with a bitter sort of cheerfulness. “If I were, wouldn’t I be _there_ , doing my job?”

“You’re,” Bowen said, and trailed off.

“A professor,” Jaskier said, “and an author, and sometimes a fucking bard, and do they even have anything in my file or can you not read?”

“I thought you,” he said hesitantly, but then said, “But then that’s stupid! Why doesn’t the crown just pay you to stay home and save half a dozen salaries of the people who have to follow you around?”

“It is not my place to question the wisdom of the Crown,” Jaskier said wearily, “nor is it yours, Bowen, might I remind you. The fact remains, this is my life, and I have to live it, and a bunch of really nasty people want to kill me for it and you’re not actually all that’s between me and them, but you _are_ between me and them, and I’d prefer you to stay there, but could you perhaps find it within yourself to not be quite such a spectacularly floppy _dick_ about it?”

Bowen had no reply for that, so Jaskier kept walking. He reached the building where the committee meeting was held, entered, and then paused a little way down the entry hall. Bowen slipped in the door, having faded back to pretend like he wasn’t tailing Jaskier, _finally_. 

“The committee in question is meeting in the third floor lecture hall,” he said over his shoulder, “so if you stationed yourself in the second-floor stairwell’s window seat you could probably have quite a good handle on all the entrances and exits without having to subject yourself to the actual content of this meeting, which I promise you is going to be the most boring thing you’ve ever encountered unless you’ve had the terrible misfortune to sit through any of Kedaris’s rhetoric lectures.”

Bowen was young, after all, and the only reason he had drawn the terrible assignment of tailing Jaskier was that he looked plausibly like an Oxenfurt student, one of the older ones. Most of the students began at 14 or 15, but some of them took so many years to finish, or went away and came back, that it wasn’t entirely impossible to have students trailing around in their early twenties, and with some suitable alterations to Bowen’s wardrobe, he was… well, moderately unconvincing but didn’t stand out in a crowd. 

(Jaskier himself had, of course, finished his own studies in less than four years, by applying himself diligently to prove that he was capable, and it had spectacularly backfired by getting him dragged home and paraded around as a desirable marriage prospect, which was why he’d run away and done his absolute best to make a spectacle of himself at eighteen, but many of his contemporaries had managed to drag out their pursuit of their degrees into their twenties. It probably wouldn’t have helped him, so he couldn’t be bothered regretting it, but he’d enjoyed those years as a student.)

(He had, of course, never applied himself diligently to anything again.)

Jaskier paused at the top of the third floor stairs, listening to Bowen sulkily setting himself up on the second-floor landing, and composed himself. It wouldn’t do to walk into this meeting still nettled. Tarnthold was on this committee, and so was Kedaris, and the balance of the committee members were people more sympathetic to Tarnthold’s worldview than Jaskier’s. His only real ally was Nerio, and Nerio was too easily-intimidated to stand up for him much.

He sighed, squared his shoulders, and went through the door into the room. A handful of people were already there-- Kedaris, but not Tarnthold, and Gallas, who was mostly all right. Jaskier went and sat beside Gallas, and she gave him a smile and a bit of an eyeroll. 

“This will, I am sure, be the highlight of my week,” Jaskier said, settling himself comfortably and stretching out his legs. 

“Everyone loves policy discussions,” Gallas said. 

Tarnthold walked in and stood surveying the room with his mouth turned down at the corners. He always looked like he’d swallowed a toad, but now he looked even sourer than usual. He saw Jaskier, and his expression went even more sour. “Sweet Mother, his mouth looks like a cat’s asshole,” Jaskier muttered to Gallas, who snorted but managed not to glance at Tarnthold. She was a good egg like that. “If he keeps going his entire face is going to turn inside-out.”

“Stop,” Gallas murmured back, “you’re going to kill me.”

“Pancratz,” Tarnthold said, and stalked over to him. 

Jaskier smiled cheerfully at him. “Tarnthold,” he said.

“Are you here for the music department or the rhetoric department?” Tarnthold demanded. 

“Yes,” Jaskier said. “Since I have sections in both.” Tarnthold _hated_ that Jaskier taught in both departments, absolutely could not fucking stand it, and had probably sworn some sort of vow to see him undone but as yet had made little to no progress in his unhinged cat’s-asshole-faced vendetta. 

“Surely you must have a hierarchy,” Tarnthold said. “Whose interests do you intend to argue?”

“Mine,” Jaskier said. Then he amended it. “Well, the students’, really; _someone_ ’s got to advocate for them, don’t you think?”

“You’re a _disgrace_ ,” Tarnthold said, throwing up his hands and turning away. 

“I mean, yes,” Jaskier said, “but I don’t see the connection to the current conversation.”

It was hard to take Tarnthold seriously as a threat when there was all this Nilfgaard business looming over him. Jaskier reflected that probably he should worry about what the old professor could do to him professionally; Tarnthold had been well-ensconced in the rhetoric department for as long as Jaskier had been alive, and had always spent all his time here, and as a consequence wielded an enormous amount of power within the university. But, Jaskier’s book about Sodden Field had published first and was an engaging and coherent story with verifiable accuracy, while Tarnthold still hadn’t finished his own manuscript on the topic. And nothing Tarnthold could do would undo Jaskier’s book’s existence. 

The meeting came to order, the logic department chairperson made the predictable arguments, Tarnthold made cat’s-asshole faces and was disagreeable. Gallas made some placating points, Tarnthold took a swipe at Jaskier even being allowed onto this committee, Kedaris backed him up, Gallas surprisingly put up an understated but no-nonsense defense of Jaskier based purely on his professional merits.

“He hasn’t the academic rigor to justify his position,” Tarnthold said.

Jaskier had pasted on an amused expression for the whole thing, and as Tarnthold’s expression grew more and more sour, Jaskier made himself look more and more unconcerned, relaxed, light-hearted. He had pushed back from the table and was leaning back in his chair, his legs stretched out before him in a position he knew showed them to advantage, his arms crossed over his chest in a way that could only display total unconcern. Into the silence as Gallas sighed and shook her head, he interjected.

“My dears,” he said, waving one hand languidly, “we all know that my function here, as in the vast majority of situations I’ve ever been in, is _purely_ decorative.”

That set Tarnthold off very satisfactorily, and Jaskier rolled his eyes and winked at Gallas, who gave him a more fondly tolerant look than he had expected. 

He finally sat forward, having prepared another outrageous remark, when suddenly the wall at the far end of the room shimmered and a portal opened, the wind coming through it blasting all the papers off the desk. Jaskier scrambled up and dove behind his chair in alarm. 

Yennefer stepped through, looking formidable, arrayed in a black and white brocade dress with her hair impeccably curled and her coldly-perfect face-illusion on. “Apologies for the intrusion, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, and Jaskier knew she was genuine because the ring on his finger vibrated slightly but unmistakably, in resonance with her physical presence. He stood up from behind the chair. 

“Yennefer of Vengerberg,” he said, into the sudden shocked quiet, broken only by the rushing sound of the portal. It was both a greeting and an announcement, as if he were the herald, crying her into a banquet.

“What is the meaning of this,” Tarnthold demanded. 

“It is a matter of kingdom security,” Yennefer said. “I’m afraid I cannot explain. Jaskier, you need to come with me.”

She didn’t seem agitated or afraid at all, but it was hard to tell with her. “Me,” he stammered, playing it up as if they weren’t intimates, as if he hadn’t seen her step out of a portal into his bedroom several times now. “What, right-- right now? I--” and he froze, went calm, and said, with trepidation, “Is it--”

“We cannot speak of it in front of anyone,” Yennefer said. 

Jaskier closed his mouth, drew himself up, made a trying-to-be-brave face, and nodded resolutely. “Of course,” he said. “Whatever you need.” He glanced around, looked at his satchel, and decided against taking it; there wasn’t really anything important in it anyway, and having to come back for it later would annoy Bowen enormously. Ah, Bowen was likely to be quite put out by this. He walked over toward the portal, and said, “There may be some, er, difficulty with my security detachment.”

“I’ve alerted the relevant parties,” Yennefer said. “Come, I can’t hold it open forever.”

As if on cue, Bowen burst in the door. “Pancratz!” he shouted. 

“I have authorization,” Yennefer said calmly, and waved her hand, casting something-- a letter fluttered and stuck against Bowen’s chest, just as she pulled Jaskier through and the portal collapsed behind them.

He staggered, and she held him up with an iron grip. It took him a moment to recover, and then he got his feet under himself, stood up properly, and said, “What’s going on?”

“Geralt contacted me on Triss’s megascope,” she said, brushing herself off. As she did so, the illusion vanished, and she was herself, in a good-quality but understated black dress, no makeup on her face, scars faintly visible, and hair pulled back a little carelessly. 

“Is-- are they all right?” Jaskier asked, alarmed. He looked around. They were in a pleasant little suite of rooms, in a sitting room area with a nice fireplace and a comfortable-looking settee, with the megascope set up in front of it, but no call active. There was a table next to it with wine and a tray of finger foods, and an ornate lamp burning in a stand. The floor had an expensive-looking carpet over part of it, and through the open door there was a bedstead visible in the next room. This was, perhaps, where Yennefer actually lived. 

“They’re fine,” Yennefer said. She stepped in a little closer to him, and put her hand on the side of his face. “I didn’t think you were enjoying that meeting particularly.”

“I, well,” Jaskier said. He sighed. “No, but it was important.”

“Figured I’d blow Bowen’s cover and get you someone new, he was a dick,” she said. “And I think Tarnthold’s being courted by Nilfgaard as a spy, so if I can get him to tip his hand then we can get him hauled up for treason.”

“ _Really_ ,” Jaskier said. 

“Oh yes,” she said. “Should nicely discredit all his work, as well, don’t you think? If we can play that hand correctly, you could wind up the most influential history professor they still have.”

Jaskier stared down at her. This was possibly the first time he’d noticed he was taller than she was. Four or five inches, only, but it meant she tucked up nicely against his chest like this. “I,” he said.

“It’s the most attractive of the retirement plans available to you,” she said. “Though, you _are_ only forty, it might be that you don’t want to settle down like that yet.”

“Forty-two,” he said faintly. No, forty-three. Whatever; his birth date had passed unremarked at some point during the last month. “Ah. Well. I hadn’t. Ah. Considered it.”

She patted his face, and stepped away, going over to the megascope. “At any rate,” she said, “Geralt contacted me via megascope, and was astonishingly adult about the whole thing. He seems to have figured out on his own that I’m not a monster and I’m not keeping you as a hostage or anything like that, at least. So I thought, well. I suppose I should reward him for not being an ass, and let him talk to you as well.”

“I suppose so,” Jaskier said, suddenly nervous. 

“If we’re quick I can bring you back to that meeting,” Yennefer said. 

“Ha,” Jaskier said. 

She was doing the thing she did to activate the megascope, and he supposed it was better to just-- tear the bandage off and dive in, rather than trying to get their stories straight or something. “So: we agreed you’re telling him,” she said. 

“Fuck,” Jaskier said. “Yes.” 

“Maybe we can get him to do something fun with us,” she said, and tossed her head coquettishly as she finished the gesture and began the incantation to initiate the connection.

“Fun,” Jaskier said, and stood awkwardly where he was, uncertain how far the megascope’s range extended. Yennefer sat down as the megascope connected, settling herself comfortably on the settee.

In a moment, Geralt shimmered into view, monochrome, sitting in a chair and frowning confusedly. His expression cleared a little and he sat back, looking-- wary. Ah, that was it. He seemed only to be able to see Yennefer, and gave her a once-over that was far more wary than appreciative. Jaskier wondered what Yennefer had said at the end of the previous conversation. 

“All right,” Yennefer said grandly. “Since you weren’t a dick, I’m rewarding you.”

“Rewarding me,” Geralt said, and it had only been a few days since Jaskier had seen him last-- at least, this shadow of him, which was detailed enough, if somewhat lacking-- but it just felt so good to see him. From his demeanor, it was pretty obvious Jaskier was out of range; he was watching Yennefer warily, like he thought she might step through the megascope and murder him, somehow. 

“Is that all I am?” Jaskier asked, and stepped up next to Yennefer. 

“Jaskier!” Geralt said, lighting up gratifyingly. He didn’t quite smile, but his face opened up, the upward quirk of his eyebrows familiar and endearing and not something Jaskier would have thought he’d imprinted so thoroughly upon, but he had. 

“Hallo, Geralt,” Jaskier said, unable not to grin like a fool at him. He did look good, his hair clean and combed and his clothes clean; he even looked well-rested. Who knew that sleeping in the woods didn’t really suit a Witcher either? “You’re looking relaxed. You know, I couldn’t tell before, are you growing a beard?”

“I usually do, over the winter,” Geralt said, rubbing his chin. It was white, of course, but it was also neatly-trimmed, and the edges were sharp in a way that indicated the wearer was keeping them up with a razor rather than just letting himself go. It was unexpectedly attractive. 

Yennefer had to ruin it by making Jaskier remember how disgusting some of Geralt’s habits were, and before he could really think it through he’d fallen into easy banter with her. Geralt even joined in, seeming amused, but it only took a moment for Jaskier to realize he’d just given Geralt plenty of information to make the connection for himself, and there was no longer anything to tell him. That face, that Geralt was making-- he was putting it together on his own, that was what he did, that was how he survived life on the Path. 

Fuck. 

Jaskier tried to wrestle control of the conversation back, but he could see it wasn’t going over well. Geralt had that mild eyebrows-raised face he used on peasants when they were explaining things to him, the face that none of them ever caught on meant that it didn’t really matter what they said so much as how they said it, because he already knew almost everything. And, sure enough, he followed up with an insight Jaskier hadn’t expected: “I can even see that she wears illusions for me but not you.”

Jaskier glanced over at Yennefer, and it was true-- she’d shed her illusions when she’d come in, and she was scarred and had her hair twisted up carelessly, and from her expression, she had forgotten about it. 

Geralt watched the two of them exchange startled glances with the kind of grimly satisfied look that Jaskier had seen many, many times, but almost never directed at himself, and after a moment, picked up a cup from a side table out of range of the megascope, and took the kind of tiny sip from it that had to mean it was very strong indeed; Jaskier had watched Geralt drink and just about anything he bothered to consume, he did so by the mouthful without worry. Whatever this was, it was powerful stuff; Geralt mostly just wet his lips with it and then set the cup down again out of view.

“Oh, why aren’t we drinking?” Jaskier asked Yennefer, who rolled her eyes at him. 

“Because we don’t need to be,” she said. “You had probably better get on with it and tell him, Jaskier. Remember we decided I’d only be a dick about it?”

“Yes, yes,” Jaskier said, slightly annoyed, turning his attention back just in time to catch Geralt sighing resignedly to himself. No, no no, this wasn’t how he wanted it to go at all! 

“You’re fucking,” Geralt said. “Each other. What, am I going to be mad about it? I don’t own either of you.”

“Oh that was no fun at all,” Yennefer said. “You should have just let me do it.” _Gods_ damn _it_ , Jaskier thought. 

“Ah,” he said, grimly amused, “but now he’s going to convince himself we’re better off without him, and go sulk somewhere. Geralt! You promised to fuck me until I couldn’t talk, I’m not letting you off the hook. I’ve never been monogamous in my life, I’m not going to start now, but don’t you dare think for a second I’m done with you. I’m Ciri’s mother, remember? You won’t be rid of me, so you’d better stop sulking now.”

“I wasn’t going to sulk,” Geralt said, and he had his jaw set in a sort of, well, sulky, resigned sort of way. Jaskier caught his eye, and there was at least a glimmer of self-awareness there-- Geralt _was_ sulking, and knew he was, and that was something Jaskier could work with. But as he drew breath to do so, Yennefer spoke up again.

“Triss told you, didn’t she,” she said.

Jaskier turned to her, jaw gaping in outrage. “You told _Triss_?” he demanded. Not only had she gossipped about it, she’d told someone who was actually _in Geralt’s physical company_ and who had therefore been forced to awkwardly not let on? While talking _to_ Geralt, who spent most of his time depending for survival on his ability to tell when people were hiding things from him? 

How the fuck was Jaskier supposed to competently handle interpersonal relationships while being actively _sabotaged_ about it? This was a nightmare. 

Geralt was denying hearing anything from Triss, but from his expression, he was feeling exactly as shitty about the realization as Jaskier was-- probably, he _had_ noticed Triss was hiding something, and now he was going to interpret all of this in precisely the worst way possible.

Oh, Jaskier was upset all right. He’d spent twenty-two years pining for Geralt, had gotten kissed like four times, and now Yennefer had, in fact, actually sabotaged things so that Geralt was going to irrevocably turn his back on him forever, and this was probably the worst thing that had ever happened to him in his life. There weren’t any particularly strong threads Jaskier could grab onto in this unraveling situation, and it all felt horribly familiar-- time after time, he’d gone into something with the best of intentions only to have it unravel like this. 

The only remaining thing was to lean in whole-heartedly, so Jaskier did. He told him the whole story, and tried to make it funny, tried to thread the needle of pointing out how ridiculous Yennefer was without painting her as a monster. It was possibly the most difficult performance of his career. 

Geralt’s face was hard to read, and Jaskier could not tell if it was working at all, and then Yennefer put on her illusion of Geralt and Jaskier’s desperation only worsened: from Geralt’s expression, this was how you lost your audience. He actually made a face of _revulsion_ at Yennefer’s image of himself, which wasn’t any insight Jaskier needed-- he hadn’t realized, but in hindsight, Geralt had indicated pretty clearly that he didn’t think of himself as physically attractive at all. No wonder that being presented with an illusion of himself wouldn’t exactly delight him.

But Geralt made a face and complained that the illusion didn’t look like him, which was an odd tack to take. Jaskier looked closer; it was a pretty good illusion, pretty convincing, though the armor didn’t look quite like any Jaskier had ever seen Geralt really wear-- there were little copper plates in it, and Geralt almost always stuck to steel. As Jaskier was re-considering, Yennefer updated the look, putting Geralt in the state she’d imagined him for that first tryst, with his hair damp and loose from bathing, and his clothes softer things like he’d wear indoors. 

It clearly took the shelter of an illusion for her to say anything genuine, and she was overdoing it to imitate Geralt’s voice. He was justified in complaining that he didn’t sound like that, but it meant he was entirely overlooking the very meaningful things Yennefer had just said. Jaskier despaired inwardly, but kept trying. 

Geralt just looked resigned, now, and Jaskier could see him withdrawing-- he was hurt, and he was going to close himself off, and that was that, and Jaskier clawed frantically at the unraveling threads of conversation. “Yennefer--” he said-- there was really only one thing that could possibly salvage this, and it was--

Fortunately, for once, she was on his wavelength, and got her tits out, because they were absolutely fantastic tits and Geralt was absolutely not going to be able to resist them, at least for a moment, at least for long enough for Jaskier to try another conversational tack.

It worked splendidly; Geralt stared at her with his mouth slightly open for just long enough for Jaskier to keep talking. Interestingly enough, he seemed almost as arrested by the sight of the dildo in its harness as by Yennefer’s bared breasts, which was a fantastic little data point.

Another data point was that Geralt definitely didn’t have a very clear self-image, because he didn’t think Yennefer’s exact replica of his cock was accurate. Jaskier wanted to proclaim himself the impartial judge but it was honestly impossible to compare at this remove. That would, maybe, maybe someday, be a service he could delightedly perform in person, but it would have to wait.

But after that, the encounter proceeded much more pleasantly, with some leverage by which to coax Geralt along to be a more willing audience. Jaskier had to bare his soul rather a bit, had to make himself horribly vulnerable, but he was no stranger to that, and at least in this case it worked. He could feel the weight of every hour of the twenty years he’d spent building his relationship with Geralt, and marvellously, for once, he could feel that weight as momentum, as gravitational pull on Geralt-- Geralt could have looked away from Yennefer, could have ignored anyone he didn’t know so well, but Jaskier could _feel_ his pull now, could absolutely see Geralt fighting with himself and it was an incredibly thrilling moment to see the part of Geralt who had actually put himself out to comfort Jaskier that horrible autumn when his dad had died, suddenly rear up somewhere in the back of Geralt’s eyes and just _obliterate_ the part of Geralt that was always a dick to him. 

And then, sensing weakness, Yennefer went in for the kill-- but kindly; crucially, she was ruthless and kind about it. 

Geralt got his cock out. 

This, Jaskier realized, this was what Yennefer had meant by _get him to do something fun with us_. Jaskier had, in his day, written a great deal of erotica and erotic poetry and even erotic balladry, the point of which was to entice the audience to lust, lustful thoughts, lustful acts, but it was something else entirely to actually, actively have sex with someone at a distance like this. It was almost torment, to be able to see Geralt’s cock, and see Geralt touching himself, and not be able to also touch, or smell or taste. But Jaskier wasn’t entirely a stranger to that, in general or in specific, to denying himself Geralt out of necessity, so it wasn’t so difficult. 

They almost lost him when Yennefer couldn’t resist making herself an illusion of Geralt again. _No, no no_ , Jaskier thought, but how to explain Geralt’s specific issues in a way that made sense? They were losing him, and only Yennefer’s tits could salvage the situation, but how to tell her kindly that all her extremely expert illusions were counterproductive?

Fortunately, the direct approach worked, and Jaskier got the situation well in hand directly, and it all came to a multiply-satisfying conclusion. In short order, he was lying in Yennefer’s lap with the lovely flavor and scent of her all over his face and his own come all over the rest of himself, and watching Geralt coming beautifully in a monochrome shadow of himself in some distant room, and it was _torture_ to see him like that, see the dazed open vulnerability of Geralt’s face, and not be able to touch him. 

Yennefer and Geralt had no sense of appropriate timing, falling to business negotiations immediately afterward. Jaskier had never seen the point of rushing the afterglow, but neither of them seemed to have any idea-- he’d had hopes for Yennefer, the way she’d fallen asleep the last time all wrapped up in him, his cock had even still been _in_ her, it had been very sweet, but he should’ve known that wasn’t vulnerability, it was just exhaustion. 

Complaining did no good; they were busy negotiating things, strategizing and planning, and this was the sort of thing Jaskier ought to be better at but he just wasn’t. Yennefer kissed his head, which was a startlingly fond thing to do, but that was all he got. He lay there looking debauched for a bit, in a vain attempt to get someone to pet him, but it wasn’t working so he gave up. 

It was going to be hilarious to try to sneak back into that meeting. It was probably still going on, unless they’d all collectively lost their shit over Jaskier’s precipitous exit. He was going to have to-- ah, he hadn’t really made too much of a mess of himself, he could freshen up pretty easily, though probably his hair was beyond saving. Whatever; this would only aid him in building the reputation he’d begun with these people. This was the sorceress, after all, whom he’d bribed with sex for information. 

Yennefer was offering Jaskier to Geralt now, though, which was a little alarming. He wasn’t just hanging out in Oxenfurt for his health. He genuinely did need the money the university was paying him to teach these courses, and if he left he wouldn’t get paid for the time he’d already worked. 

But yes. He could spare three, maybe four days, probably, if he could travel by portal without significant risk. With the promise of, perhaps, finally, some alone time with a willing Geralt at the end? Didn’t matter what the climate was like, there. 

He let Yennefer portal him straight back into the meeting, despite what a terrible idea it was, having only briefly ascertained that she really had been in contact with the Redanian Intelligence people and there’d be some replacement for Bowen waiting surreptitiously nearby. Yennefer had laughed a little hollowly, and mentioned the mage who was presently assigned to the King in somewhat bitter tones, but that was all above Jaskier’s security clearance and he genuinely didn’t want to know.

Yennefer gestured him through the portal, and he stepped through with as much composure as he could muster, waving her a coquettish little farewell with his fingers as he went. The last thing he saw was the amused, almost self-mocking smile she made at his wave. 

She’d put him into the hallway directly across from the doorway into the room with the meeting, and the force of the portal had blown the door open, from the expressions on everyone’s faces. The portal whirled out of existence as he caught his balance, and he glanced back, then stepped into the room.

“Ah,” he said, seeing that everyone was still there. “Wonderful, I wasn’t sure if I’d be too late.”

“Pancratz, what in the Goddess’s sweet name is going on?” Kedaris demanded.

Jaskier closed the door behind himself, glad he’d taken a moment to be sure there was nothing particularly incriminating on his clothing. He looked tousled, surely, but it was plausibly deniable that he’d been doing something athletic rather than… what he’d been doing. He leaned on the doors a moment, sighed, and put on his best weary, forthright attitude.

“The thing,” he said, “about involving yourself firsthand in historical events, is that sometimes, that means you’re involved firsthand in historical events. I know too much.” Which was, possibly, too true, and he shouldn’t have shown his hand to these assholes, and should let them go on thinking he was nothing more than a frivolous bard who couldn’t keep it in his pants. But he was actually tired. And he didn’t miss the way Tarnthold’s sour fury was tempered with a glimmer of… something sly. Oh, yes; Tarnthold had some vested interest in this. Yennefer might be right.

He drew himself up, made a theatrical gesture, grinned, and sashayed back to the seat he’d vacated, where his satchel was still leaned up against the leg. “Please,” he said, “please, don’t let me interrupt further, I’ll get the notes later, only, had we argued the point about the essay grading schema yet?”

They had, and he flopped with artful gracelessness back into his chair and drew them all back out into fruitless argument, and by the time the meeting broke up and they all left, an eternal hour later, there was a drably-dressed, too-old young man waiting outside the door to follow Jaskier back to his quarters at slightly too-close a distance for unobtrusiveness.

Jaskier let himself back into his building, went up to his room, sat on the bed, and let himself think for just a moment about what the fuck he was doing with his life. 

No, he decided, no poetry about this, and retired to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am in a much better mood today, less overwhelmed. I hope you all feel better too, or are hanging in there all right. There are some indications starting to pop up about how we're going to resume our lives after all this, in my personal and professional life; I'm going to find a way to see my partner, at least a little bit (we've been remote for a couple of weeks and i just fucking _miss_ him, Jaskier and Geralt are getting a _lot_ more contact in this story than we are IRL) and my work might have some remote stuff I can do and maybe some things are going to be okay for some people? and it's going to be an awfully long time before there's any kind of normal but maybe we can do some living in the meantime, I don't know, but I feel like it's possible to think about, now. Maybe it's just that it's above freezing and things are finally turning green here. I don't know!  
> ALSO  
> My friend (whose house I'm staying in and helping her homeschool her children in all this) and I managed to convince her husband to install the Witcher 3 and play it, for our amusement, and so I've gotten to spend a couple of evenings watching Geralt run around looking politely baffled by peasants and falling to his death off cliffs and things. Her dear husband elected to play on Death March difficulty mode so mostly it's all just grinding to get up to a level where he can do more than run away from enemies-- the vast majority of the game so far has been spent picking flowers, which is hilariously a thing you can devote a lot of time to, in-game, because the flowers are useful/sellable. Also harvesting honeycombs, after literally getting stung to death on the first attempt. (You have to use Igni, it turns out.) Oh and he got that lady's frying pan back for her, for 8 xp and a fresh-baked pie the lady mysteriously had in her rain-soaked skirts after standing on the stoop all night in the pouring rain waiting for someone to show up and help her get into the house. [He's been carrying that pie around in inventory ever since and i'm like listen when are you going to eat that pie and he's like no it's so fresh i can't bear to cut into it. In-game it's been like a week... and Vesemir's still sitting in the bar where we left him...]
> 
> So there might wind up being yet more game stuff in these stories after all, since now I've actually witnessed the game being played. It is stupidly entertaining-- maybe because the scenery is so lovely and he gets to be outdoors and run around and that's something we're not getting much of? I find myself wistfully looking forward to it as if it were something *I* was doing, not just watching. LOL. And really, in almost every dialogue scene, Geralt's default expression is this polite raised-eyebrow slightly-skeptical but pleasant demeanor, it's really quite cute and very different from the scowls of every bit of Official Game Art. Until he decides to call someone out for lying, where he gets this scowl that is also not at all like the Official Game Art glower; he sort of scrunches up his face and frowns and it's adorable.
> 
> Also, the way Roach shows up immediately when you whistle no matter where you are? That shit is _hilarious_ if you've ever _met_ a real-life horse.


	12. Pretty Scary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: teeth bullshit/ dental issues. End notes for more details.

Coen shuffled into the kitchen tiredly, filled the kettle, and stuck it on the hook before wearily setting about the task of building the cookfire up, and lighting it with an _Igni_. He was exhausted enough that it took him two tries to summon enough focus to cast a large enough _Igni_ for it to actually catch.

He sighed and sat down on the stool beside the hearth, picking up the bellows to work his pathetic little spark into enough of a fire to get it actually going. He’d slept even more poorly than normal last night, tormented with nightmares, and he just didn’t have the strength or coordination to do better.

Finally the fucking fire caught enough that he could sit back a bit. He leaned against the edge of the hearth and rubbed his tired eyes. He felt wrung-out with grief, and while he was grateful to find sanctuary at Kaer Morhen, sometimes it was hard to deal with the Wolves and their weird interpersonal hangups. At least they generally seemed to mean well, and to have genuine affection for one another under all of it.

He got himself together enough to get up from the stool, and turned around and startled violently when he caught a glimmer of fucking wolf eyeshine and realized someone was sitting at one of the work tables in the dark, unmoving and barely breathing. “Fuck,” he said, as he recognized Lambert, “what the fuck, man?”

“Sorry,” Lambert said, shifting his position self-consciously. “I thought you knew I was there and then I realized you didn’t know and I just sort of-- froze. That was real awkward, Coen, and it didn’t have to be, and I’m sorry.”

“Shit, man,” Coen said, and sat back down onto the stool. Lambert had just watched him barely be able to cast a basic Sign. Fantastic.

“You don’t look so good,” Lambert said. He’d been writing in a little book, and he left it lying there and came over to peer worriedly at Coen. “You cursed or something?”

It was a rude fucking question, but probably a justifiable one. “I, ah,” Coen said. “No, I don’t think so, I just--” He shook his head. “You ever just-- I mean, you lost everybody, right? Used to be a whole keep full of people here and they’re gone and how do you-- get over that?”

Lambert blinked at him, and grimaced. “I mean,” he said, “good fuckin’ question. I guess I don’t have a lot to tell you. I guess there’s no real shortcut. It’s been-- ah, decades, Coen, and I still get bad nights about it, so it’s not like I’m going to judge you.”

“Why wasn’t I there,” Coen said, trying and failing to keep his mouth shut. His hands were shaking. “Why?”

“Hey,” Lambert said. He put out a hand, caught Coen by the shoulder, and then pulled him into an embrace. “Hey, man. Fuck.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Coen echoed, and he just didn’t have anything left to resist letting himself collapse against Lambert. He’d known the Wolf for decades, and they hadn’t been that close but they weren’t _not_ friends, and fuck, that was really the best he had left now-- people he wasn’t _not_ friends with. Fuck.

“I got you,” Lambert said, and hauled him bodily over to the bench along the wall. “Hey, I got you.”

Coen hung onto him and shook, and managed not to let anything else out, but only by clenching his teeth until they ground together and he tasted blood. Lambert hung onto him, moving one hand up and down along his shoulder blade, and it helped.

He pulled himself together and wiped his face, and Lambert left his arm around Coen’s back, giving him a little more space but still staying in contact. “It’s not like it gets easier,” Lambert said gruffly. “It just. You can kind of see around it, after a while. It doesn’t take up as much space. You can think about other shit more. But it doesn’t. You know. Go away.”

“Yeah,” Coen said. He caught his breath. Shit, he’d cracked at least one tooth. He sighed, probed with his tongue, and spat the broken pieces that came loose into his hand.

“Shit,” Lambert said.

“It’ll grow back,” Coen said tiredly, rolling it with around his palm with his thumb. He sighed, sensing something in Lambert’s attention. “Do you want it?”

“Uh,” Lambert said, caught out. “Oh, no, I was just thinking-- I said I’d do alchemy with Ciri--”

“Witcher teeth,” Coen said. He held out the broken piece, and sighed. “Take that and I’ll get the other half out later for you.” They were useful in all kinds of potions and things; dissolved, Witcher teeth were a powerful intensifier and stabilizer. It wasn’t something a Witcher would _ever_ write down, wasn’t something you’d tell any kind of outsider; it was decidedly a secret ingredient, because letting outsiders know that Witchers themselves contained alchemical components was a fucking terrible idea from a sheer survival standpoint.

“I used up my stash and I’d been thinking about whether it was worth pulling one just to use, or if I could hassle any of the guys and see if they had a stash,” Lambert said. “But.”

“I cracked another one too,” Coen said wearily. “I’ll get it out for you when I pull the rest of this one.”

“Only if you’re gonna do it anyway,” Lambert said, looking at Coen’s broken tooth in his hand. Suddenly his expression shifted and he looked up. “Oh I got a way to repay you. Gossip.”

“I don’t need repayment,” Coen said absently, then caught up. “What?”

“Gossip,” Lambert said, leaning in and grinning dangerously. He stood up and went back to the table where he’d been writing, and lit a candle with an effortless little sparkle of _Igni_. Coen dragged himself upright and detoured past the standpipe sink to get himself a cup of water before he came to stand next to Lambert.

Lambert had a little bound book open, the one he’d been writing in. He flipped a page, licked the pen, and re-dipped it to make a tally in something he’d laid out in arcanely abbreviated shorthand. “So you know how you made Eskel take dinner up to Ciri and Triss,” he said.

Coen lit up. “Yeah?”

“ _Oh_ yeah,” Lambert said.

“Details?” Coen said. This was the most entertaining thing that had happened all winter. The mage was a strange combination of appealingly unthreatening and absolutely terrifying. He’d’ve been interested himself, perhaps, if he’d been in any state to contemplate something so involved as a relationship, but on the other hand, absolutely no way was he ever going to be able to trust a mage for anything important. It already was making him twitchy that she was here. But Eskel was so amusingly awkward about it, as if he’d never been flirted with before. He was old, older than Coen, clearly a fully mature adult who’d been out on the Path for entire human lifetimes, and a pretty lady leaning into his space and touching his hand had gotten him flustered like a stripling.

“I didn’t spy on anybody,” Lambert said, “but I’ll tell you this--”

“You didn’t spy, hm?” Coen said. He knew Lambert was always prowling the halls at odd hours, knew the guy was the nosiest motherfucker he’d ever met.

“Spying is different,” Lambert said. “I keep track of things, that’s not spying.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Coen said, “what _does_ count as spying?”

“If I’d pressed my ear to the door, for example,” Lambert said, “that’d be spying.”

“You didn’t, hm?” Coen said, openly skeptical.

Lambert tilted his head a little, drawing himself up, but then deflated. “Well,” he said. “I was going to, but my medallion started humming and I realized she had a silencing charm on the whole place so it wouldn’t have done any good.”

Coen laughed. This was the perfect distraction; he felt better already. “Well,” Coen said, “then what did you find out, in your not-spying, besides the fact that our mage friend has her rooms warded?”

“Nothing,” Lambert said. “I will tell you, Geralt had a _very interesting_ conversation via megascope. But then I went back to my rooms and was meditating--”

“Why on earth would you do that?” Coen asked.

Lambert tilted his head, raising an eyebrow. “If you _must_ know,” he said, “I was making potions, to prepare for the shit I’m doing with Ciri today. But, at any rate, I came out of meditation around one in the morning to find none other than Eskel coming down the hallway, carrying Ciri, asleep, back to her room, and I opened my door and he shushed me, but not before I got a good whiff of him.”

“Oh yeah?” Coen said.

“ _Oh_ yeah,” Lambert said, “Merigold’s scent was all over him, and there was no mistaking it, they absolutely fucked.”

“Really,” Coen said. “Wait, with the kid in the room?”

“You know Merigold’s got a suite of rooms,” Lambert said. “Eskel’s pretty particular, he wouldn’t do anything in front of that kid.”

“Ah,” Coen said. “So the kid fell asleep, and then they had some fun, and then he went back to his own place in the middle of the night.”

“Well, he stopped by Geralt’s to drop Ciri off,” Lambert said, “and then went back to his own place.”

“Of course you kept tabs on that,” Coen said, amused.

“Listen I got years of data on that,” Lambert said, “I’m not about to ruin my streak. But there’s another data point, whatever he and Merigold got up to was enough that he didn’t feel the need to top things off with Geralt afterward.”

Coen had picked up that Geralt and Eskel had a more-than-brotherly relationship, pretty much right away, so that wasn’t a surprise. He had also picked up on how Lambert spied on everyone basically all the time. “This is good gossip,” Coen said, nodding to himself. He had been worrying at the broken edge of his tooth with his tongue, and reached in now and yanked it the rest of the way out with his fingers. “Thanks. I needed that. I gotta know, though.”

Lambert made a face as Coen dropped the broken, bloody chunk of tooth into his hand. “Yeah?”

“Do we mock Eskel for it or are we nice about it?” Coen asked. “Like, I like him, he’s a good guy, but it’s really fun to wind a guy up about maybe sticking his dick someplace dangerous.”

“I don’t know,” Lambert said, looking completely gobsmacked. Likely, it had never occurred to him to plan whether or not to be an asshole to somebody. He clearly devoted all of his attention to gathering data and planning attacks, and spent absolutely none of his brainpower on interpersonal relationships.

“I don’t know Eskel well enough to know whether he’ll take a ribbing well or not,” Coen said. “I was trying to gently needle him about it before and I thought he might cry or run away or something. I don’t want to poke at him now if he’s not going to take it well.”

“It’s hard to make him blush,” Lambert said thoughtfully. “He’s kind of. I mean, Geralt, you can absolutely take the piss out of all day long. He’s a goddamned ridiculous creature and he knows it, and he’ll let you wind him up about it, he’s worth it. But Eskel… I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever given him a hard time about anything.”

“That _can’t_ be true,” Coen said. “That completely and utterly just _cannot_ be true, Lambert. I would venture a guess that there is no person you’ve spoken to more than once that you have not given a hard time to.”

“... Fair,” Lambert said.

Coen got up and went to spit blood into the basin drain, then rinsed his mouth out and spit again. He’d cut his tongue on the jagged edge of his tooth. It hurt, and he was cranky, but Lambert’s gossip had raised his spirits.

Lambert was consulting his little book. “I’m trying to remember,” he said, “if Eskel’s ever had a girlfriend before.”

“What, you have that written down?” Coen asked.

Lambert quirked an eyebrow. “I got _everything_ written down,” he said.

Coen came over and looked down at the battered little book. It was open to a page with an intricate collection of ruled lines, with little markings in them-- not just tick-marks, there were variations in the shapes. Lambert was tracking something in a very involved way. Almost like the way mages kept records on experimental spells, and such.

He kept a journal too-- they all did, it was the way you collected knowledge about how to fight the most dangerous monsters. But his wasn’t this exhaustive-- this was just a massive amount of data. He could see enough of the other pages to tell that most of the book was like this, charts of data. Most of his was paragraphs of observations, which he then would compare with the others--

The others. He turned away, putting out a hand to hold the edge of the table as the void of grief yawned again.

None of it mattered, anymore. All of that was gone, lost in the avalanche that had buried the keep and everyone in it, called down by that group of mages, and all their knowledge was gone with all of their folk, and he was just a broken tooth-socket left to wander the world alone, and none of it mattered.

The School of the Griffin was dead, and Coen was just a remnant.

_______

“Come on, kid,” Lambert growled, rapping on her door. “You were supposed to meet me in the kitchen.”

“Oh,” Ciri said, a little muffled. “Uhhhhhhh-- hang on.”

“Can I come in?” he said. Clearly, she’d gotten distracted and forgotten the time.

“Uhhhh,” she said, but didn’t say no. He waited, hand on the doorknob. “I, I guess.” He opened the door. “Don’t laugh,” she added.

“Don’t laugh,” he said, wondering what on earth was going on.

She was standing next to the little desk in her room with her arms wrapped around herself, wearing a floor-length too-large dress she’d clearly borrowed from the sorceress, and a scowl, and her face was smudged unevenly with a number of pigments.

“Oh, my,” he said. “What are you up to, kid?”

Her scowl deepened. “Triss was teaching me about-- girl stuff,” she said, “and I wanted to try it myself but it’s not really working.”

“Girl stuff,” Lambert said. He closed the door behind himself. They weren’t going to be doing any introductory alchemy, that was pretty clear. Just as well, it was fucking freezing out today and it’d be miserable down there in the cellar and he didn’t feel like it either. He’d done all that prep-work, but-- it would keep, all of it.

He sighed, and unfastened his outermost jacket, shedding it and hanging it on one of the hooks on the back of the door.

“Makeup,” Ciri said, scowling. “But I’m _terrible_ at it.”

“Well,” Lambert said, “it just takes practice, like pretty much anything.”

“What would _you_ know about it?” she demanded.

“I know a lot about a lot of things,” he said. He walked over and looked at the supplies laid out on her little side table. A couple of little pots, some tiny brushes, a stick of kohl. “I’m old, remember?” This was… decent stuff, but not high-end. He sighed. Clearly Merigold had handed over her least favorite stuff. She could portal anywhere on the Continent, or beyond, and the best she could do for this kid was her castoffs? He sniffed suspiciously. Actually, this seemed homemade. Maybe Merigold was a make-her-own kinda girl. “I have better makeup than this. C’mon, kid, I can show you some tricks, too.”

Ciri stared at him, blank with shock. She’d tried to line her eyes in kohl but had done a very wobbly and sort of blotchy job of it. She had white eyelashes, black eyeliner wasn’t going to do a great job for her if she didn’t do anything about that. “Why do _you_ have makeup?” she asked.

There were a number of possible answers, most of them perfectly plausibly deniable. Lambert considered each of them. Old girlfriends, gifts, plunder. Plenty of innocent reasons he’d have it. He shrugged. “Why not?” he asked, instead of any of it.

“I thought it was a girl thing,” she said.

“It’s whatever you want it to be,” he said, unable not to be a little sneery about it. “There’s not, like, a law about it. Anybody’s allowed to draw whatever kind of lines they want on whatever part of themselves they want. C’mon.”

Ciri had never been in his room before. Come to think of it, nobody usually went in Lambert’s room. It was mostly clean, because he didn’t own much stuff. He shut the door, and then spent a moment using _Igni_ to heat the solid, heavy cast iron brazier he kept in the middle of the room. If they’d be in here too long he’d make a real fire or something but usually that was enough to make it comfortable for a while.

“I want to learn how to do that,” Ciri muttered.

“Eskel’s workin’ on it,” he said. He didn’t think she was going to be able to use Signs. They were pretty Witcher-specific, and whatever they were training her for-- well, she wasn’t going to do the Trial of the Grasses and that was that. Still, he tended not to argue about that shit in front of her. Wasn’t helpful for her to overhear it.

He went and unlocked one of the trunks by his bed, rummaged through it a moment, and took out a particular little box. “Here we go,” he said. He brought it over to the desk by the window where he did most of his journal updates, and set it down, then lit the lamps with a couple of little _Igni_ signs. It was daylight, but you needed a lot of light for this kind of thing. He unfolded the mirror he kept covered, set it up on the desktop, and went to the ewer, heating the water in it with another _Igni_.

Okay, he could see why Ciri would want to learn how to use that one.

He dug out a couple of clean washcloths. “All right, kid, first off you want to use warm water and a pretty soft washcloth and just get your face completely clean. We’re gonna start over with you, so really get all of that off of there.”

“I don’t believe you really know how to do this,” she said.

“Well, believe it, or don’t,” he said. “But I do. What I’m thinking is, I’m gonna do yours, and then let you practice on me, okay? We don’t have to do herbal shit in the basement, it’s colder than a witch’s tit down there and the wind’s screaming like one too.”

“Colder than,” Ciri said, and looked briefly shocked.

“I didn’t make it up, that’s a thing people say,” Lambert said. “I mean, I never touched one, I wouldn’t know if that’s really a thing, it’s just something people say.” _Could ask Geralt, or Eskel_ , he did not say. He wet one of the washcloths and handed it to Ciri, then took the other one. “Right. So,” and he went to work, first wetting his face, then scrubbing at it. “I don’t remember being your age, but I think my skin was a bunch greasier around then. Course, I think I was mutated by then, and it all went kind of crazy for a while, but I hear that sort of thing happens to humans too, just. You know. A little differently.”

“Vesemir keeps telling me they have to make Witchers before puberty,” Ciri said solemnly, but she was washing her face too, and she was copying him so he made sure to scrub at his eyebrows and show her how to wipe at her eyelids to get the eyeliner off.

“Yeah,” Lambert said. “Don’t scrunch your eyelids, right? You need them to be flat so you can get the marks off. Like this.”

She watched, and then copied him, and it did a much better job at getting the smears off. “Oh yeah,” she said, looking at the washcloth. “That worked better.”

“I told you,” he said, “I know what I’m doing.”

Once her face was clean enough-- he took the washcloth and finished the job for her, taking her chin carefully between his fingers, since she couldn’t really see what she was missing-- he got out one of his little potion bottles. “This one’s not poison,” he said, when she looked dubious. “You don’t drink it. This is just regular witch hazel. You put it on your hands and then smooth it over your face. Makes up for the stuff the water takes out. Helps keep you from getting too many pimples.”

“You’re sure this is safe for humans?” Ciri asked doubtfully.

“Yes,” Lambert said. “A human taught me this.”

“Who?” she asked.

Lambert sighed. Would a thirteen-year-old girl from a noble family know about whores? “She was very pretty,” he said. “Here, like that, just a few drops in your palm, then just kind of-- pat it around, yeah, like that. Listen, kid, I don’t know what you know about life out there but she was the kind of lady who makes a living by being pretty.”

“Oh,” Ciri said brightly, “a prostitute.”

“Yes,” Lambert said. Good, then, he wasn’t the one corrupting her. “When I was real young and first out on the Path she took me in and taught me a bunch of stuff. I mean, that’s the way to do it, but I guess I don’t know if I can recommend that to you, I don’t really know how well it translates. Probably you wouldn’t be interested in most of the stuff she taught me, but I don’t know what you’re into.”

Ciri blushed a little. “Well,” she said.

“All right, come and sit down.” He turned the chair at the desk around, and sat her on the trunk by the window, opened the box of his makeup supplies, and took everything out one at a time. “I got a lot of stuff in here. You don’t use it all, all of the time, but the whole point is that you can make yourself look different depending on what you want, right?”

“That’s what Triss said.” Ciri looked interested. Lambert belatedly wondered if he had anything inappropriate in this box. Probably not? Probably none of it was poisonous either. He had other boxes for that kind of thing.

“So you have to play around with it a little bit first,” he said, “figure out what you like to look like, and then get used to how you do it. I don’t wear this stuff real often but it can be fun. Mostly my colors aren’t gonna be right on you, either-- and neither are Merigold’s, she’s got way different coloring than you do.”

“That’s what she said.” Ciri looked a little discouraged. “But it’s not like I can go find this stuff myself, somewhere!”

“Relax,” Lambert said, “I’ll find something that’ll work for you.” He arranged all his little pots in one section, all the brushes in another, the sticks in another. He had some powders, and some things he kept in little cakes.

Most of the things in this kit were the hard-to-find pigment powders, and then the replaceable carrier materials; generally, he’d mix up a batch of something to use all within a single occasion, so it wouldn’t spoil. “Actually,” he said, as he mixed up a tiny batch of eyeliner in one of his spare little pots, “making this stuff could be a good lesson in alchemy. It’s not alchemy, but the mixing techniques are about the same.” He finished the mixing and set the pot down.

“What we need to focus on first, though, is basic techniques. Now, there’s a bunch of stuff I just never ever use, that a lot of women do, so I can’t really tell you much about it. I don’t ever coat my whole face, because I don’t like how it feels or smells, but a lot of people do so their skin looks really smooth and even.” He shrugged. “You’re young, you probably don’t need that. Merigold obviously doesn’t do it because you can see her scars, but she’s also a mage-- they look like whatever they want, eventually, I don’t know how it works.”

“My grandmother never painted her face,” Ciri said, “but she did the outlines around her eyes, which is what Triss was trying to teach me. That’s what I want to know how to do. I’ve worn makeup before but the ladies put it on for me, and I don’t have anyone to do that here.”

“No,” Lambert said, imagining it for a moment, a coterie of fine Cintran ladies-in-waiting all in brocade tittering through the corridors. Most of them would have died of exposure instantly, he was fairly sure. “Well, so, let’s just play with that, then. That’s mostly what I do too, if I’m going to wear makeup for something.”

“When do you usually wear makeup?” Ciri asked.

Lambert shrugged. Might as well be honest. “To feel pretty, or to look scary, or sometimes both,” he said. “I don’t do it here, there’s nobody here who’d think I was either pretty _or_ scary, but. Out in the world sometimes, just for a change, it can be fun.” He selected one of the applicator sticks out of his bag and set it down next to the pot he’d just mixed up. “All right. Let’s see. Look at me a second. What do you think, do you want me to do a really thin line so it’s understated and subtle, or do you want me to do a thick black line all the way around so nobody can fail to notice?”

“The second one,” Ciri said.

Good, that would be easier for her to copy. “Okay,” Lambert said, “one dramatic look coming up.” He got her head positioned correctly, and chose the stick. He could go over it with the paintbrush later if it wasn’t enough. “Now. Here’s how you do this without getting it everywhere.” He positioned the mirror so she could see herself as he worked, and then demonstrated the angle he’d use on himself, before carefully pulling the skin taut around her eye and drawing a single, sure line. “It’s that easy,” he said. “But the real key is to do the other eye the same way. That’s tricky. But. You just practice.” He could tell she’d had this done before, because she didn’t flinch the way he had when he’d first had someone put makeup on his eyes.

“Okay,” she said. He positioned himself carefully, got everything lined up and the skin held in place, and drew a perfect, symmetrical line on the other eye.

“Nice,” he said. “Okay, I actually didn’t think I could do that so well, but I did, so. Which just goes to show you, confidence is a lot of it. It’s not a big deal if you mess up though. Now, underneath--”

He showed her how to look up to get her eyelashes out of the way, which surely she must know from having the ladies-in-waiting do it, but she seemed so interested and agreeable he might as well show her all the tricks he knew. And then it was time to show her about putting pigment onto her eyelashes, which he rarely bothered with but if she didn’t do she’d look absolutely bizarre, since her eyelashes were so white.

“You must know about this already,” he said, using his finger to add a tiny drop of water to the cake of pigment, then scrubbing it with the comb-like brush.

“I’ve had it done, yes,” she admitted. “But I like how you explain it.”

“Good,” he said. At the end, she turned and looked in the mirror, and clapped in delight.

“That’s just what I wanted to look like,” she said.

“Oh, we should do your eyebrows though,” he said. “Mm, probably we should just comb a little… not quite so dark. Yeah.” He combed some clear gel through her eyebrows and then applied brown powder with a little brush-- just a tiny bit-- and blended it carefully through. “There.”

He showed her the mirror, and she gasped in delight. “Yes!” she said. “Now you can tell if I’m mad!”

“Now,” Lambert said, steeling himself a little, “you can practice on me, if you want.”

“Yes,” she said.

It took him some discipline not to flinch as she came at his eyes rather enthusiastically with the stick, and she did poke him in the eye once and he managed not to overreact with rather a lot of effort. “Ah, it’s all wavy,” she said in dismay, when she’d finished.

“I flinched,” he said. He glanced at the mirror, managed not to laugh, and said, “Well, let’s wipe it off and try again. The point is the practice.”

Her second attempt went better, in that she didn’t stab him in the eye this time, and he squinted at himself in the mirror. “Ah,” he said, “not bad.” It was not good.

“It’s still kind of wobbly,” she said critically, unhappy.

“Well,” he said. “Here’s the secret for that, then,” and he made sure his fingertip was clean by scrubbing it on one of the washcloths, then carefully set about smudging the line. “It’s not, ah, understated, but you can kind of-- yeah, you just pull the color a little, make the line blurry, there you go.”

When he’d finished, he had an extremely overdramatic smudgy look. He looked faintly ridiculous, but it wasn’t bad, as aesthetics went.

“You can have more fun than that,” he said, a bit apologetically, “if you have more colors and things. I don’t, I don’t do a lot of fancy stuff with this. I just think it’s fun.”

“It is,” she said, admiring herself in the mirror.

“Don’t we look cute,” Lambert said, putting his face next to hers so they could both look. It actually was an acceptable look. “If only there was somebody here to impress.”

“What did you say? To feel pretty or look scary, but nobody here would appreciate either?” Ciri scrunched up her nose as she considered it.

“Yeah,” Lambert said, “these assholes are all used to me. Nobody can appreciate my charms.”

“Do you have a… girlfriend?” Ciri asked. “Out there somewhere? Anyone you come back to?”

Lambert hesitated. He didn’t want to lie to her, but he also didn’t want to tell her. “Well,” he said. “Not exactly, no.”

“Or a... boyfriend,” Ciri said, sliding a sideways look at him.

Rattled, he said, “Uh-- w-well,” and then frowned. “What do you know about that?”

“Geralt has both, I think,” Ciri said. “I’m not sure how it works. I think he broke up with the girlfriend, I really didn’t get all of what was going on with that, but it’s not really... over? The boyfriend is Jaskier, I like him a lot and I wish he had come here with us.”

“Oh,” Lambert said. “You mean, like--” He was thinking she must be describing a non-sexual relationship.

“They shared a bedroll most of the time when we were traveling,” Ciri said. “I saw them kissing a few times too.” She tilted her head a little, and said, with a very worldly air clearly copied from someone much older, “My grandmother and the ladies of the court maybe didn’t teach me anything concretely useful about my own body and its processes and all, but I do know that it’s a time-honored tradition for nobles especially to take lovers of their own gender because there’s no way you’ll get any bastards from it, and it’s generally held to be a discreet and genteel practice.”

“I,” Lambert said slowly, “never really thought of it that way. Huh.”

“Of course,” Ciri said, “Witchers don’t have that concern, but.” She twisted a little in her seat, rocking back and forth-- nervously, Lambert realized; she was working her way up to broach some topic.

When she didn’t continue, Lambert leaned in a little and said quietly, “I’ll only tell you if you can keep it a secret.”

That worked. “A secret,” she said. “Of course I’ll keep your secret!”

“I have a boyfriend,” he said, and it felt strange to say it like that. “I see him most years in the summer sometime.”

Ciri looked delighted. “You do,” she said. Then her expression shifted a little. Perplexed, she said, “Why is it a secret?”

Lambert shook his head. “I want it to be,” he said. “It’s not that these guys would be mad, or something. They’d understand. But I want to keep it to myself. It feels more special that way. They’d want to meet him, or tease me, or give me advice, or-- things like that, Ciri. I only want to think about him when I want to, and I just want it to be something I have for myself.”

Her face went warm with delight again, and he knew he was smiling like an idiot at her, but it was okay to smile like an idiot at a kid, right? “Will you tell me about him sometime?” she asked.

He pretended to think about it. “Maybe,” he said. “If you can keep it secret like I asked.”

She nodded, serious and excited all in one. “So,” she said, carefully casual, “do you just like boys, or do you like girls and boys both?”

That was the real question she had; he could feel a kind of resonance to it, behind the attempt at casualness. So he gave it real contemplation.

“I like both,” he said, “but, in different ways.”

“Oh?” She was trying very hard not to sound as interested in that as she did.

“I mean,” Lambert said, and let himself go gentle. “It’s different for me, I’m a Witcher, I can’t breed with anybody so that doesn’t matter. If you wind up with any noble rank, you’re probably going to have to have a husband and make at least one baby with him, it’s hard to avoid people expecting that. Nobody expects that from me so it doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t think I like boys like that at all,” she admitted, and that was the crux of it, that was what she’d been so worried about.

“You don’t know any boys,” Lambert pointed out gently. “At the moment, you only know Witchers, and we don’t really count. Plus we’re all really really old, and _really_ ugly.”

She smiled at that, and looked sideways at him. “Well,” she said, “you’re less ugly now.”

He laughed. “With the makeup? Yeah, I’m prettier now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: Coen grits his teeth so hard he cracks two of them, and one of them bleeds and comes apart.  
> It's described in dribs and drabs throughout the rest of the section, but none of it is super-vivid? I just know a ton of people (myself included) have some body-horror issues with teeth falling out, I know I have a lot of dreams about it. So I figured, I'd better mention it and let y'all brace yourselves. It's okay! Witcher teeth grow back, I decided, largely because this is something that freaks me out!  
> (And guess what's happening to the kids I'm helping homeschool! Oh yeah the older one, the boy, is seven, and just lost his first tooth and the second one's wildly wiggly, and oh while we're at it his workbooks are all about learning to tell time which is a thing that I have never been good at my whole life to the point that it's a family meme that B Can't Tell Time, so it's vaguely hilarious all throughout as I confront a whole bunch of my Lifelong Issues all at once in the midst of this Whole Global Pandemic Situation HA HA. Honestly it's fine but like I wouldn't be surprised if next up we wound up having a haunted clown doll that had to sleep in my room or something, it would just be a logical next step.)


	13. At Home

Jaskier shoved the trunk through the portal before he could think better of it, tossed through the armload of furs Yennefer had pressed on him (which were apparently the property of this Triss Merigold person), and then picked up the heavy sacks of provisions, his own satchel and lute case, and steeled himself.

Behind him, Yennefer was clearly struggling mightily to power the network of spells she’d set up. He had half-wondered, earlier, whether she were really going to do all that work just to conceal his destination, but now she had her jaw clenched and her eyes wide staring at nothing, and her back was set in a rigid arch as she fought to hold the portal.

He stepped through quickly, and it was such a disorienting sensation that he tripped and fell, so he landed in a snowy courtyard in the dark on his hands and knees. He said “oof” as the portal vanished behind him, then sat up.

The first person he saw was a large, looming figure, bundled in a fur hood-- oh, it was Eskel. He’d met Eskel, years ago now, and had mostly forgotten, but the witcher’s familiar, scarred face looked down at him and curved into something that might have been a smile. “Jaskier,” he said. “Long time no see. How long are you staying? This is a lot of luggage.” He took one of the heavy bags away, and helped Jaskier up.

“Most of it’s for Triss,” Jaskier said. “I have no idea what most of this is.” He looked around curiously, but in the dark he couldn’t tell much more than that this was a ruined castle of some kind, with a curtain wall breached in at least one place letting wind howl through. The snow had drifted across cracked flagstones and in places, ragged stands of winter-dead dry weeds stood up.

“Geralt’s inside,” Eskel said. “Ciri’s already in bed, he was seeing to that I think, and we felt the portal so I thought I’d come out and be sure it was you.” He laughed. “Let’s get all this inside, I expect Triss will need a few minutes. She was helping Yennefer with the transportation spell, I think.”

“It seemed to be taking a lot out of Yennefer,” Jaskier said, and gathered himself up. Eskel took one handle of the trunk and waited, and Jaskier reluctantly took the other. It was very, very heavy, and he had to stop and put it down and readjust his grip twice during the short walk across the courtyard. During that time, he had time to notice the weather. “Okay,” he said, “it’s really fucking cold here.”

“Yes,” Eskel said. “I hope someone warned you.”

Jaskier wasn’t incorrectly-dressed; he was from Redania, after all, and they got cold winters there. He was wearing a long sheepskin coat and layers of wool under that, and a fur-lined cap and fur-lined mittens, but the wind was slicing right through all of it as though he hadn’t bothered. “I prepared,” he said, “but,” and he had to stop and set the trunk down.

“Almost there,” Eskel said, gruffly gentle as he had been so long ago-- twenty years?-- when he’d met Jaskier. “Just a bit farther. It’s warm in the dining hall, there’s a fire going, and Geralt’s probably there by now.”

“Who else is here?” Jaskier asked.

Eskel threw him a startled glance. “Oh,” he said. “I mean, all of us. Me and Geralt and Lambert and Vesemir. Oh, and Coen, from the Griffin School. And then Triss and Ciri. That’s everyone.”

“Lambert,” Jaskier said, “and Vesemir. Should I know who they are?”

Eskel blinked at him. “Geralt’s never even _mentioned_ them?”

Jaskier shook his head. Ciri had mentioned an Uncle Vesemir, maybe, but. Geralt had never spoken in any detail about any of them. “Not by name.”

Eskel sighed, and made to pick up the trunk again, so Jaskier collected himself and did his best to hold up his end. “We’re the last of the Wolf School,” he said. “Master Vesemir was our sword instructor-- he taught the older boys, from after we took the Trials on up through we were deemed ready to go out. He’s the only instructor who survived the pogrom. And then there’s me and Geralt, from the same year, we hadn’t come home that winter, and then Lambert, he was about, mm. Ten-fifteen years younger than us, he’d just gone out on the Path when the pogrom happened, and hadn’t come home that winter either. There were a handful other survivors, for a while, but. By now, everyone else is gone.”

“Geralt has never told me any of this,” Jaskier said.

“Geralt’s not great at,” Eskel began, with a sigh, and then paused as Jaskier had to let go of his end of the trunk. It was _very_ heavy. “There rocks in this thing?” he said. “No, no, here, take this bag, I’ll just drag this the rest of the way, no point torturing you more.”

Jaskier staggered under the addition of the other bag of provisions, and then Eskel’s burly form in the dark made quick work of hauling the trunk, much faster than they’d been going before, scraping the metal-clad corner over the snowy ground. The wall of the building loomed up and then there was a door and a blast of warmth came out of it. Jaskier managed to grab the trunk handle to help Eskel bump it up over the door sill, and then they were inside and he mostly fell over.

“Shit, it’s cold out,” another voice said, a sharp nasal one, and someone pushed the door shut behind them and took one of the sacks that Jaskier could barely stand up for holding.

He looked up into another set of golden cat eyes, a narrow-faced man with a hawk nose and a sharp widows-peak hairline and a couple of facial scars who was regarding him with a dubious expression, his mouth twisted a little sarcastically. “Wait, is this him?”

“Jaskier,” Eskel said, “this is Lambert, Lambert, yes, this is Geralt’s pet bard, Jaskier. I’d recommend you don’t fuck with him too much, he’ll probably write a humiliating song about you.”

“What if I _want_ a humiliating song all to myself?” Lambert asked, taking the other heavy sack from Jaskier and slinging it easily over his shoulder. He was a well-built kind of guy, not quite Geralt’s height, and the sarcasm looked to be a reflex.

“I do take commissions,” Jaskier said, pulling his hat off and stuffing his mittens into it so he could fix his hair. He looked around as he unfastened his overcoat.

It was a large hall, with a huge fireplace at one end that was burning quite merrily, and a long table down the middle with a fair assortment of food remnants scattered across it.

“Commissions,” Lambert said. He looked Jaskier up and down. “I don’t know what I expected. I think I thought you’d be cuter.”

Jaskier pretended to be offended, pressing his hand to his chest and drawing himself up indignantly. “Cuter!” he said. “Cuter! Excuse me, sir, I am _extremely decorative_.”

A door in the far wall opened, and a man slipped through, tall and thin but well-built, dark-skinned and cat-eyed. “Ah,” he said, deep-voiced, “are any of these supplies for us?”

Another man followed him through the door, pushing it closed behind him-- an older man, stocky and heavyset, with graying hair in a queue. He said nothing, but studied Jaskier with an unnervingly keen gaze. Cat eyes, too-- they were all Witchers, and Jaskier had never really been afraid of a Witcher before but somehow four of them at once was rather a lot, all staring at him.

“They’re all things Triss requested,” Jaskier said. “I’m not sure what’s what.”

“That’s a lute,” the older man said, keen attention going to the case slipping from Jaskier’s shoulder.

“It is,” Jaskier said. “I am, after all, a bard.”

The eyes went to his face, sizing him up. “Long time since I heard anyone play much of anything,” he said. This had to be Vesemir, Jaskier thought.

Eskel cleared his throat. “Jaskier the bard,” he said, “this is Master Vesemir, and that is Coen of the School of the Griffin.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintances,” Jaskier said. “And I shall certainly play you something, if you like, as soon as I can feel my fingers.” Surely even Witchers liked ballads now and then.

“Let him get settled,” Eskel said, though Jaskier noted there was something a little deferential in his address toward Vesemir. “I made him lug that heavy trunk most of the way across the courtyard, and portal travel isn’t quite so effortless as you’d think.”

Jaskier realized he was shivering slightly. He stepped a little farther into the room, and made his way toward the table. “Come, sit,” Vesemir said, and stalked off toward the fire.

“We’ve got beer, I think,” Eskel said.

“The beer’s safe for humans, I made it so Ciri could have some,” Lambert said, wandering over toward the table. “The ale’s got stuff in it that’s probably not human-safe though. Anything harder-- well, I think we do have some neutral spirits, I made a bunch human-safe for Ciri when I was teaching her.”

“Oh,” Coen said, “I didn’t know you guys actually got around to any distilling. Thought it was just tea parties or whatever.” He said it so mildly, it seemed like a fairly neutral observation.

“We did real work,” Lambert said, a little defensively. “I’m good at multitasking.”

“I’m just saying, you were wearing a lot more eyeliner than I ever wound up putting on during _my_ alchemy lessons,” Coen went on.

“Like I _said_ ,” Lambert said, “I’m good at multitasking. And there’s a lot of downtime in distilling, so if she wanted to practice makeup, it was a good time to work on it.”

This was not at all what Jaskier had expected. “You’re teaching Ciri how to do makeup?” he said. “That’s fantastic, I was worried I’d have to.”

“You _were_ the one who gave her the talk about her changing body,” Eskel said to Jaskier in a mild tone, and as he spoke, Lambert visibly un-bristled. Oh, he’d expected to get mocked, by one of them or another. Well, nobody seemed to be, which was an unexpected bit of information about how these scary-looking Witchers were adapting to apparently-collectively raising a teenaged daughter.

“Yes, it was unnerving,” Jaskier said. “The most parental I’ve ever acted in my life, and it was a distinctly maternal thing to do.” He unslung his lute and set it on one of the benches near the fire. Vesemir had settled himself near the fire on an opposite bench, and was frowning with his arms crossed over his chest, but Jaskier got the feeling that for his face, that was a relatively neutral expression. It still made him slightly nervous.

“Better you than me, kid,” Eskel said, and patted him on the shoulder, then went over to the door in the wall and went through it.

The hallway door opened, and someone came through-- Geralt, and Jaskier immediately felt his shoulders loosen in relief. He wasn’t-- _afraid_ of these people, but Geralt was a sight for sore eyes.

He looked good, actually, well-groomed and healthy, and as he turned and spotted Jaskier and actually _smiled_ at him, Jaskier realized he himself was grinning like a fool. “Jaskier,” Geralt said. “You made it. I was half-afraid whatever elaborate nonsense Yennefer was up to wouldn’t work.”

“Oh no,” Jaskier said, “she’s very good, Geralt.” It was too much to hope for Geralt to kiss him, in front of this crowd of predators, but he was hard-pressed not to want it. Geralt looked _so_ good-- he was clean, well-groomed, his beard neatly trimmed, and he was wearing no armor at all, and no swords-- he had on a nice quilted long jacket, deep blue, with turned-back cuffs showing the pale lining, and he had no armor on his legs but was wearing sheepskin-lined boots held up with fabric wrappings crossed over around his lower legs. He looked comfortable, and clean, and healthy, like he really-- oh.

Like he was at home.

Jaskier had seen him in many states over the last two decades, but he’d never seen him _at home_ , and it wasn’t really until this moment, surrounded by a bunch of men who all vaguely resembled Geralt even though they were all different builds, facial structures, and skin tones, that he’d ever really understood that. Geralt _did_ have a home, a context, a _family_. And this was it.

And yet the whole time they’d been headed here, he’d made it sound so unappealing and harsh and unwelcoming. Almost like he had wanted to dissuade Jaskier from coming here.

Geralt came right up to him and without pausing, put his arms around Jaskier. The embrace startled him and he had to grab Geralt’s arms to keep from overbalancing. It wasn’t a standoffish sort of embrace.

“Agh, you’re freezing,” Geralt said, and wrapped his arms around Jaskier tighter. “How long did Eskel make you stand out there? Eskel, bards are fragile.”

“Mmph phhmmph phmmph,” Jaskier said, even though Geralt wasn’t actually quite smothering him. It seemed a suitable response.

“I made him do some laps, Geralt,” Eskel said; he’d come back from wherever he’d gone, through that door. “Got to toughen him up a little if he’s going to keep surviving whatever it is your plans for him are.”

“O _ho_ ,” Lambert said, sounding lewd about it, but he didn’t say any more. Jaskier didn’t know him, hadn’t ever heard a single thing about him, and still felt like he knew enough to guess that this was an unusually mild reaction from this guy, like he was going easy on Jaskier, or like maybe somebody was giving him a Significant Look right this moment to keep him quelled, though buried as he was in Geralt’s grasp Jaskier had no chance to suss out what the dynamic really was with that.

Geralt let go of Jaskier then, and pounded him on the shoulder, though not too hard. “How’s the leg?” he said.

“Oh,” Jaskier said, “quite healed. It was sore a while but it’s cleared up.”

“Good,” Geralt said. He slung an arm around Jaskier’s shoulder, and pulled him down to sit on the bench. Eskel handed him a cup, and Jaskier took it somewhat cautiously.

“It’s just small beer,” Eskel said, a little apologetically. “We brewed the stronger stuff with, well, herbs that are ostensibly just for flavor but would probably not be good for you.”

“Ah but I’ll have some of that,” Geralt said, and Eskel poured a round for all the Witchers from a pitcher that had been on the table before bringing his own cup over and sitting on the bench next to Jaskier.

Coen sat down a little distance from Vesemir, and Lambert went over and poked at the fire with a rusty poker that had clearly been made from an old badly-notched sword. Jaskier sipped the beer, which was a small beer but quite a nice one, delicately flavored and brewed with considerable skill, and enjoyed the fact that Geralt was still sitting right up next to him.

“So Ciri’s in bed,” Jaskier said.

“Yes,” Geralt said. “She’s a bear if she doesn’t get enough sleep. It’s not easy getting her going in the mornings, and it doesn’t help that it stays dark so late here.”

“Just as well,” Jaskier said, “I don’t imagine she’d want to go to bed at a reasonable hour if I were here.” He paused, and narrowed his eyes at Geralt. “She _does_ miss me, doesn’t she?”

Geralt didn’t quite roll his eyes, but smiled tolerantly and knocked his shoulder against Jaskier’s by way of answer. “She’s settled in pretty well, but she does talk about you.”

“I hear Lambert’s taken over the mothering,” Jaskier said. “Or, I guess that’s sistering.”

“I get to be the big sister for once,” Lambert said, still poking at the fire but turning to make an expression somewhere between a defensive jeer and a proud chin-thrust.

“Lambert’s been the baby for… some years,” Geralt said. “He’s glad to have someone junior, finally.”

“It’s different when you used to have a bunch of juniors and they all died,” Lambert said, suddenly disarmingly solemn. He hung the fireplace poker back on the nails where it clearly was meant to rest, next to the mantel, and swung around to sit next to Coen, who looked strangely stone-faced through all of this.

“Well,” Jaskier said, “that was a pretty solid conversation-ender, do you get points for those?”

“Oh, we _should_ have a points system for that,” Lambert said, perking up.

“Mm, have to figure out how to weight the system to be fair for the ones who never talk in the first place,” Eskel said.

“You’re always taking Geralt’s side,” Lambert groused.

“Leave me out of this,” Geralt said.

“Geralt’s a _champion_ conversation-ender,” Jaskier put in. “He doesn’t need any score-weighting.”

“No, that’s what I meant,” Eskel said. “Geralt would just win by virtue of refusing to ever engage in conversation in the first place. Have to figure out how to take that into account. Like, a guy who can refuse to engage with _pass the salt_ is hard to beat.”

“Geralt talks _plenty_ ,” Vesemir said, with a little twitch of his eyebrows. “It’s just all sass.”

“We can’t all be the nurturing big-sister type,” Geralt said.

“No,” Lambert said, “some of us apparently have to suddenly go all-in on the dad concept. Isn’t _that_ a fuck right in the mind-hole, you spent all those years bullying me and now outta nowhere you’re Dad Of The Year.” Oh, Jaskier _liked_ this guy.

“Language, boy,” Vesemir said, “but moreover, _you_ think that’s weird, how do you think _I_ feel?”

Geralt was still sitting close enough to Jaskier that Jaskier felt his body jerk as he swung his head around to stare at Vesemir in surprise. Vesemir half-smiled, jerking his chin toward Geralt. “I’m not saying you haven’t always been a decent person at heart, little Wolf,” Vesemir said, “but you spent so long pretending Destiny had no hold on you, it was surprising how quickly you completely rearranged yourself to suit it.”

Vesemir didn’t look that old, but Jaskier could tell he was ancient, and watching an ancient, grizzled Witcher call Geralt _little Wolf_ while he completely reduced Geralt’s inner motivations to transparency, and Geralt _sat there and took it_ , was possibly the most wonderful and astonishing thing Jaskier had ever experienced in his life.

Geralt’s mouth actually gaped open slightly, and he made a noise that wasn’t a word, clearly just as floored by this as Jaskier, only without the delight part. “I-- _what_ ,” he managed.

“It’s not that we don’t love and support you,” Vesemir said, fantastically straightforward and without the slightest hint of embarrassment. “Cirilla is our family now, of course. But she already was thirteen years ago, and I don’t really understand why you had to flail around and pretend like it wasn’t inevitable all that time. You spent so long avoiding us, too.”

“What is _in_ this _ale_ ,” Geralt said finally, and turned his head to glare at Lambert, who snickered.

“It’s not the ale, buddy,” Lambert said.

“No,” Vesemir said, “it’s not.” He turned his gaze on Jaskier, and said, “I had meant to ask, have you eaten?”

“I have,” Jaskier managed to say, “thank you.” He decided to give Geralt a moment to recover, and said, “And I think my hands have rather recovered, did you want me to play for you?”

“Oh, shit, yeah, that’s right,” Lambert said. “Hey, are all your songs about Geralt?”

“Almost none of them are,” Jaskier said. “Do you want me to do those or avoid those?”

“Avoid,” Geralt said.

“Do!” Lambert said. “Sing ‘em all! I wanna hear!”

Jaskier had already sussed out what was really up here, and looked at Vesemir, whose habitual frown softened slightly in amusement: Vesemir was aware of the judgement Jaskier had just made, as well. “I would like to know what is popular out in the world,” Vesemir said, “to start with, but I wouldn’t object to hearing some of your songs about our Wolf as well.”

“Diplomatic,” Jaskier said, and found a space on the bench to set his cup down so he could get the lute out and tune it up.

“I’m going to go see if Triss is all right,” Eskel said, pushing himself to his feet carefully so as not to upset Jaskier’s cup.

“Mm, you’d better,” Lambert said, with a strangely emphatic leer. Eskel ignored him, and the others pretended to pay him no mind either, but Jaskier noticed that Geralt caught Coen’s eye and looked amused.

Jaskier played them the currently most-fashionable of the songs making the rounds at Oxenfurt, the one all the beginner students were keen to learn and the intermediate ones were showing off by knowing. It was catchy, overly-elaborate, and would be a cliché by the end of the season in Oxenfurt and nobody would be able to play it seriously, but it would have a much longer half-life in other places and probably would be played at banquets in Temeria with great sincerity for years to come.

He explained all this in asides during the instrumental parts, which seemed to greatly amuse the Witchers, and even made Coen’s stony expression soften into a recognizable smile at one point when Jaskier snuck in a sly dig about how gullible Temerian nobles were.

Immediately after, he launched into one of the other session tunes, the one with the filthy third verse. Vesemir was the first one to catch on to how filthy it was, and he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head somewhat. Geralt caught on when Jaskier elbowed him as he drew out the more suggestive lyric, and Lambert didn’t get it at all even when Jaskier repeated it.

He finished the song, lowered the lute for a moment, and said, “Lambert, it’s about hand jobs,” and then immediately, before anyone could react, raised the lute again and started to play a perfectly reasonable and respectable ballad, an old classic session standby.

“What,” Lambert said, lost, and Geralt guffawed, Coen snorted, and Vesemir’s shoulders shook as he turned his head to conceal his laughter.

Not his rowdiest audience, but not a hostile one either. Jaskier ran through the rest of the ballad, which was a mostly-tame one with only a single suggestive line in it. Lambert squinted suspiciously, Coen elbowed him, and Vesemir’s face creased into a small smile, though Jaskier knew it was more at the other men’s reaction than that his performance was that funny.

Geralt had heard the song before, and was already rolling his eyes a little bit. “You should sing along,” Jaskier said.

“I don’t sing,” Geralt pointed out, which was true; he pretty much never had, that Jaskier had heard. Not even really humming.

Jaskier plucked out the rest of the song and then put his hand against the strings to stop them ringing. “Oh!” he said. “This is my chance, then, to ask-- all the weird shit Geralt does, how much of that is Witcher stuff and how much of that is that Geralt’s just weird?”

“Geralt’s a fuckin’ weirdo,” Lambert said immediately.

Geralt leaned forward slightly, and Jaskier could read that it was him weighing his options insofar as attempting to hit the other Witcher. He decided against it, and sat back, glaring. But he wasn’t really mad, and he wasn’t really afraid of anything Jaskier might find out. It was… refreshing.

“So you can sing,” Jaskier said to Lambert.

“I mean,” Lambert said, “not great, but yeah.”

“See in the dark,” Jaskier said.

“Standard,” Lambert said.

“Sarcasm,” Jaskier said.

“Part of the schooling,” Lambert said.

“Obsessive about sword care,” Jaskier said.

“Oh,” Vesemir said, “I personally beat that into all of them.”

“Good to know,” Jaskier said. “Weird obsession with giving your horses all the same names?”

“Oh that’s just Geralt,” Lambert said.

“It _does_ get tedious coming up with new names,” Vesemir put in.

“The baths thing,” Jaskier said. “Absolutely no personal hygiene but really fond of baths.”

“That’s just him,” Lambert said, “most of us know how to wash our faces.”

“The teeth thing,” Jaskier said.

Lambert, Coen, and Vesemir all looked at Geralt, for some reason, and Geralt sat up, abruptly losing his bored expression. “You _told_ him--” Lambert said.

“I have never told him one gods-damned thing about my teeth,” Geralt said, indignant and slightly-- horrified?

“It’s not funny,” Vesemir said, sternly.

“I did _not_ ,” Geralt said. There was an unexpected depth of feeling in that.

Jaskier held out his hand, palm-out. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I just meant-- like, no personal hygiene, but obsessive about brushing his teeth. Because I figure you can heal everything else but not your teeth. Right? I didn’t think that was a secret, I’m sorry.”

They all stared at him a moment, then looked at Geralt. “I told you,” Geralt said. “I’m not an idiot, I wouldn’t _talk_ about the teeth thing.”

Jaskier had a feeling he’d just scraped along the surface of something really important. “I didn’t know it was a secret,” he said. “Sorry!”

“Oh, that’s not--” Lambert said, and bit it off, glancing sidelong at Vesemir. Vesemir’s expression was hard to read, but Jaskier interpreted it as quelling-- that perhaps Lambert had been going to explain that no, that wasn’t what the secret was, which would quite defeat the point of not telling Jaskier about it.

He liked Lambert, the guy didn’t have much of a filter. He wasn’t stupid, but he definitely didn’t have much of a filter _at all_. But of course, now Jaskier was wild with curiosity about what the secret about Witcher teeth could possibly _be_.

The door opened, and Eskel came through, along with a woman. To Jaskier’s practiced eye, something about their respective postures, indicating whatever interaction they’d had just before the door had opened, suggested to him that they were lovers.

He stood up; she was a young-looking and beautiful woman, with a generous wide mouth and a squareish face softened by a cute pointy chin, wide-set dark eyes and a sweet-looking expression. A light tracery of scars marred her throat and chin, but Jaskier instantly realized that they were from the battle of Sodden Field, and this was the mage Triss Merigold.

She looked at him and smiled politely, and he said, not really having to pretend to more awe than he felt, “Yennefer said you held the doors.”

That changed her polite expression to one of surprise. “I did,” she said.

He bowed to her, and held it slightly longer than manners would dictate, before straightening up. Everyone was staring at him, including her, though he could tell her startlement had a distinct tinge of pleasure to it, and he grinned. “They said I was a bard,” he said, “not that I write history books too. Julian Alfred Pancratz at your service, but please do call me Jaskier-- I just published a pamphlet on the Battle of Sodden Field, and while it isn’t set to circulate widely, it _is_ widely acknowledged as the best collection of firsthand accounts of the events.”

“Ah,” she said, and made a courteous gesture. “Triss Merigold,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Jaskier.”

Jaskier sat back down, and she took a seat next to Eskel a little farther along the bench. She was wearing an exquisite fur-lined robe with a hood that framed her face beautifully; like all female mages, she had her look and presentation fine-tuned to perfection.

Jaskier could respect that, certainly. “I also wanted to thank you,” he added, retuning the highest string on his lute, “for giving Geralt the use of your megascope, as that certainly helped us with the planning for this resupply run.”

“Ah,” she said, “Yennefer said you’d have--” She turned to look, and clapped her hands in delight. “Wonderful! She did get my things.”

“Yes,” Jaskier said, “and there’s more in the trunk.”

“Perfect,” she said.

Jaskier played another ballad, watching the by-play as everyone reacted-- this time, Lambert refilled everyone’s drinks, and Triss was drinking the human-safe small beer instead of whatever it was the witchers were drinking.

It was Vesemir who stood up first. “I am enjoying this,” he said, “but I’m ready to retire for the evening. Thank you for playing for us, Jaskier, it’s a long time since I heard anything so skillfully played as that.”

“We didn’t hear any of the songs about Geralt yet,” Lambert pointed out.

Jaskier laughed. “Well,” he said, “I’m staying another day or two, there’s always tomorrow. I’m about ready to turn in, as well.”

“Hm,” Lambert said, giving him an amused but narrow-eyed look. Jaskier assumed an innocent expression; he had no idea what sort of things Geralt had said about their relationship. “We gave Merigold the nicest guest room,” Lambert went on.

“I got space,” Geralt said. “He’s only staying a couple of days.”

“Hm,” Lambert said, smiling slightly, but he let it drop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am attempting to post this while a very excited 7-year-old is talking directly into my ear about something he's repeated seven or eight times now and I've tried answering him and I've tried engaging him so now I'm just going to ignore him and let him work through this, this is really clearly not about me at all but oh boy. This is a lot. Wow!
> 
> I admit that much of the free time I'm not spending commenting I'm now spending on writing really stupid recaps of our watching-Friend-play-Witcher-3 sessions. I don't know why, I'm just compelled to write them. I think they're hilarious and I find them soothing. I've put them all up tagged "[Wee Precious Flower Prince Geralt](https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/tagged/wee-precious-flower-prince-geralt)" on my Tumblr, and that link might work and might not-- the cast of characters is my Doctor Friend and former college roommate DF doing the playing, and his wife and my bestie since high school MathMom (MM) doing much of the color commentary. 
> 
> It's just. A lot of concentration, to do any writing, and the kids don't ever stop talking, like, ever? Ever ever! Ever. Ever!
> 
> I'm doing great, how are you guys doing? Great I hope. Great. I very mildly but stupidly burnt myself on a teakettle and am bedecked with a Pokemon Band-Aid that the one kid keeps poking because she's so amused by it. It's fantastic.


	14. Salacious Descriptions of Bosoms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's not talk about how many tens of thousands of words I've made y'all read between when Geralt promised to fuck Jaskier until he forgot how to talk until this chapter where he finally does it. Let's just... actually, let's _yes_ talk about them, that's been maybe my favorite part of all this, the talking, whether I manage to respond to comments or not. <3 <3 <3

Geralt had expected to be more nervous about this. He’d been reluctant, hadn’t wanted Jaskier to come to Kaer Morhen, but-- well, it being only a couple of days was one major consideration; Lambert could be restrained briefly, but generally after a little less than a week something would set him off and he’d be relentless after that, and Geralt knew he himself tended to get less reasonable after only a little pressure of time. But two, maybe three days? Should be easy going.

It had been a good start, at least. Jaskier had instantly sized everyone up and known the right thing to say, too, which, with him, was a hit-or-miss proposition-- sometimes he just settled into a bad dynamic and got a whole place turned against him in nothing flat. Which, to be fair, happened to Geralt often enough as well that he couldn’t accuse the bard of any particular misdoing in that respect. It didn’t matter, anyhow: he’d figured out what to say to everyone and seemed in slight danger of actually forming some sort of unholy alliance with Lambert, which was likely to go badly for Geralt but probably would be entertaining, at least. 

It was still deeply disorienting to remember that he’d stopped trying to hold Jaskier at a distance anymore. It was all right if he let Jaskier know who he was; he was allowed to say what he was really thinking, allowed to let on that he was fond of him. It wasn’t… anything Geralt had really done before, though, was the problem; he’d mostly spent his whole life either holding people at a distance or not talking about it, and he wasn’t really sure how to navigate being openly fond of someone and admitting it.

Well-- he’d tried that with Yennefer and now that he thought about it, he’d mostly been letting the djinn steer that, inasmuch as any of that had been steered at all. He’d said the most astonishing things to her, in hindsight, and Jaskier had probably overheard some of it, and he hoped Jaskier wasn’t hoping for similar treatment because, well. It wasn’t something Geralt was sure he could replicate without, well, being cursed. 

But as the door to his bedroom closed behind them and the lamp on the mantel sparked to life at his gesture, Geralt suddenly found something new to worry about. It hadn’t ever occurred to him to wonder what Jaskier would make of seeing this place, but now he saw it with fresh eyes as Jaskier set his lute case down and stood in the middle of the entryway, looking around with slightly-wide eyes. And now, as if for the first time, Geralt took in the animal pelts nailed to the walls, some with skulls still inserted and claws still on, and the shelves full of tattered books and collected arcane objects and odds and ends, the table with its competing collections of herbal preparations and weapons under maintenance, the fur rugs, the furs on the bed, the furs on the chairs and windowsills, the heavy drapes made of salvaged brocade… it was all pleasant enough to live in but was a far cry from the sort of thing Jaskier was probably used to, living in a nice place like Oxenfurt.

“Oh,” Jaskier said, distracted. “Furs! Very… rustic.”

“This has been my bedroom since I was… about twenty,” Geralt said. “It may not be decorated to my current tastes, exactly…” During the pogrom, it had been only lightly ransacked, so it was largely the way he’d assembled it during his twenties, back when he’d been excited at the idea of having his own space. Lambert’s room had gotten trashed, and Eskel’s had been damaged somewhat, but for some reason they’d mostly left Geralt’s alone. 

“How would you decorate it now?” Jaskier asked, tilting his head and peering around with far too much curiosity.

Geralt looked around for a moment, considering that, and then had to admit, “I wouldn’t.”

It was true; most of what was here, he’d collected years ago. He didn’t drag that much stuff home anymore, and he went years without coming here at all. He knew Lambert came in when he wasn’t here and had long ago pawed through and taken anything that was actually of any value or interest-- he’d done it to upset Geralt, and Geralt had punished him by just not getting upset about it, and instead simply retrieving a couple of items he recognized from Lambert’s quarters, and furthermore taking a couple of things that weren’t his that he just fancied. It had set off a minor prank war, but. It had been about… twenty-five years ago, maybe thirty, and things had settled down considerably in the interim.

Although. He squinted suspiciously at one of the specimen jars on the end of the bookshelf. It had contained a water serpent preserved in alcohol, but he could see-- fucking _Lambert_ \-- that there were several other items in the jar that he would lay good odds were probably bits of human anatomy Lambert had collected expressly to do this with. The last remnants of the prank war. 

Jaskier was poking at a harpy skull set on the edge of the bookshelf, very delicately, with one finger, but then he tilted his head and squinted. “Are those all-- _books_?” he asked, attention sharpening.

“Mostly,” Geralt said. Oh no, he was going to lose Jaskier’s attention to this. And sure, many of the books were obscure academic tomes but there were, well, probably a lot of battered novels of embarrassing subject matter in there, from his younger days. 

Who was he kidding, he still fucking _loved_ stupid romantic novels with knights-errant and salacious descriptions of bosoms in them. “I-- salvaged a lot from-- I bring back ones I find too.” He stepped into Jaskier’s space, a little awkwardly, interposing his body between Jaskier and the jar of pickled… whatever it was now, and the groaning shelves of tattered novels. “You can look at them in the light,” he offered. “In the morning.” After Geralt had taken a moment to relocate the jar and a hefty section of the bookshelf.

That attention turned to him, now. “Hm,” Jaskier said, smiling a private, pleased little smile. “You had something else in mind for tonight?”

“Maybe,” Geralt said, utterly failing at being smooth. “I, uh, I just worry about you straining your eyes.” 

“Is that all,” Jaskier said, stepping closer and tipping his head back to look into Geralt’s face. He wasn’t that much shorter than Geralt; he was exaggerating the gesture slightly, clearly pretending to be smaller than he was-- he even batted his eyelashes a little. It was funny, and Geralt found himself grinning almost despite himself. 

“You are ridiculous,” he said. Jaskier grinned back, licking his teeth eagerly, and Geralt had to kiss him then.

It was always slightly awkward, meeting again after an absence-- honestly, there weren’t many lovers Geralt had encountered again after any kind of passage of time, so it wasn’t really anything he was expert at navigating. 

Well, except Eskel, if he counted that. And he’d known Jaskier so long, it wasn’t really-- it wasn’t that awkward at all. Sure, the kissing was new, but the physical reality of him, the sound and smell of him, the size of his body and the slant of his shoulders and-- 

“Ah fuck,” Jaskier hissed, tossing his head back and sucking in a breath while Geralt gnawed hungrily but gently at his neck; somehow Jaskier was pinned up against a wolf-pelt-lined wall, near the fireplace, and he had his leg wrapped around Geralt’s and his hands up under Geralt’s shirt somehow, inside his jacket. “Ah-- fuck, you gonna do what you promised?”

“Yes,” Geralt said. And he was plenty distracted, but not so distracted he didn’t catch the scent wafting past in the draft under the door. He turned his head, raised his voice, and said, “Lambert, fuck _off_.” 

“Hmn?” Jaskier asked, blinking at him with his eyes beautifully unfocused. 

“Lambert likes to listen at doors,” Geralt said. “It’s disgusting and creepy and at some point I’ll throw him out a window over it, _again,_ but he has correctly sussed out that I’m far too distracted to do that tonight.”

“Should get Yennefer to make you a, a charm or a ward or something, for the door,” Jaskier said muzzily, unconcerned, and wriggled in Geralt’s grip, rubbing himself delightfully up against Geralt’s body. “Mm.”

“I’m sure Triss has one on her door so he can’t spy on her and Eskel,” Geralt said, “so he’s here out of boredom.” He tried to concentrate for a moment, to scent whether Lambert had moved along-- it was the smell of the beer on Lambert’s breath he’d caught, but he knew which of them it was without needing more than that-- but Jaskier writhed really distractingly, and he turned back to him with a growl. 

“I _thought_ the two of them had something,” Jaskier said breathlessly. “Oh-- fuck, Geralt.”

“Yeah,” Geralt said. “Well-- listen, we don’t need to be quiet for Lambert-- there’s no point, he’s got Witcher ears-- but Ciri’s in the next room through that door over there, and she sleeps heavy enough but I really don’t want to have to explain to her if she wakes up. So--”

“Got it,” Jaskier said. His hands were cool and dry against the bare skin of Geralt’s back under his shirt, smooth over his scars. “So… your… little brother, if I’m reading this correctly, is spying on us and we’re just going to be all right with that.”

Geralt sighed. “Do you want me to go chase him off?” Throwing him out a window generally bought about three quarters of an hour of peace, but after that the prank war would be back in full effect and there might be heavy casualties.

“No,” Jaskier said, “I’m delighted. And he usually spies on you when you have sex? Which you do frequently here?”

Geralt paused. “I,” he said, “well. Lambert spies on everything that happens here. But. Uh.” It had never really before in his life occurred to him that when he and Eskel fucked, that was the sort of thing that a lover who wanted to be exclusive might consider to be unfaithfulness. It hadn’t mattered, because he’d never had a lover who wanted to be exclusive for longer than maybe a week. Even Yennefer-- well, they hadn’t ever discussed it, and it hadn’t ever been that long consecutively. 

“I mean,” Jaskier said abruptly, “it’s not my business, really, I--”

“No,” Geralt said, “no, it is-- it’s your business. They’re-- he’s not my brother, exactly, really--”

“You fuck Lambert?” Jaskier asked, sounding surprised.

“No!” Geralt said. “No, that’s-- okay, _he’s_ like my brother, my _little_ brother, I don’t think I could--”

“Eskel, then,” Jaskier said. 

Geralt felt like his face was hotter than the rest of him. “Uh-- Remember how I-- that first time, I talked about schoolboy stuff?”

“Yes,” Jaskier said.

“Eskel,” he said. “I, before we really knew what our dicks were _for_ exactly. Like-- ever since that.”

“Ah,” Jaskier said. “And still?”

“Yeah,” Geralt said, and he couldn’t look in Jaskier’s face, somehow. It wasn’t like he was ashamed. Maybe it was embarrassment. It felt like-- well, he’d never been embarrassed about being naked but it was a little like other people seemed to feel about that kind of thing. “I mean. Not all the time. It’s just. That’s never-- been different.”

“And Lambert listens to you do it through the door,” Jaskier said. “And that’s-- is that part of it?”

“ _No_ ,” Geralt said hastily, “no, that’s-- I can’t stop him from doing that but I definitely don’t _want_ him to be doing that. That’s _definitely not_ part of it.”

“I’m not judging you,” Jaskier said fondly, “I’m just trying to get up to speed.”

“You’re caught up,” Geralt said, wanting to move past the conversation, and kissed him.

“Yes,” Jaskier said, “except-- Eskel’s fucking someone else now and that’s--”

“That’s fine,” Geralt said, “we’ve never cared about that.” _We like to compare notes_ , he thought about saying, and decided that would probably sound… not good. (He was looking forward to the eventual debrief, though-- especially if Eskel had any insights into fucking a mage one wasn’t djinn-curse-bonded to, but also just in general because Triss was attractive and probably good in bed, and from the scent on Eskel the other night he’d surely shown her a good time.)

“All right,” Jaskier said, “ _now_ I’m caught up.” Geralt hummed and put his mouth on Jaskier’s neck, scraping the skin there just a little bit with his teeth just to feel how Jaskier’s body twitched against his in response. “Ah! Don’t--”

“I won’t mark you,” Geralt said, letting his voice buzz in his chest. “Unless you want me to.”

“Aa _ah_ ,” Jaskier said, high and sharp, writhing under Geralt’s teeth, and it went straight to Geralt’s cock. A noise like-- a prey animal, almost, yeah-- only what Geralt wanted to do wasn’t eat him. His blood was moving under his skin, fast heartbeat, breaths coming short and sharp, and his skin tasted familiar and maddeningly sharp.

“C’mon,” Geralt said, and picked him up, bridal-style, an arm under the backs of his knees. He carried him over to the bed and tossed him down on it. “Warmer over here.” He’d had a fire going in here ever since Triss had confirmed they were doing the whole elaborate portal thing tonight-- a couple of hours, now, and he’d spent some time earlier filling in the chinks around the window, re-hanging the insulating tapestries around the bed, and it was actually a reasonable, comfortable temperature in here. 

He lit the lamp by the bed; it was light enough in here for him to see already, but he wanted Jaskier to be able to see too. 

“It’s really hot when you snap your fingers and make fire,” Jaskier said.

“It is… hot,” Geralt said, a little hesitant. He couldn’t mean that literally, it was an inanely obvious thing to say. 

“I mean,” Jaskier said, “attractive.”

“I can do better things with my hands,” Geralt said, actually meaning that literally, and Jaskier bit his lip and writhed a little. 

“It _is_ warm in here,” Jaskier noted somewhat belatedly, seeming surprised. He unfastened his jacket and wriggled out of it, and Geralt pulled Jaskier’s boots off, then removed his own, and shed a bunch of his own layers into a pile on the trunk at the foot of the bed.

“Of course it’s warm in here,” Geralt said, pausing to stand in his shirtsleeves next to the bed and watch as Jaskier toyed with his shirt’s buttons, slowly exposing his neck and the top of his chest. He was clearly doing it for effect, tracing his tongue and teeth over his lower lip very deliberately-as-if-absently, looking up at Geralt through his lashes, and it was nothing he hadn’t directed at Geralt a thousand times, but Geralt had never allowed it to land, before. And it was now. “I want you naked and I want to be able to take my time with it, not have to rush through before you freeze to death.”

Jaskier shivered a little at the word _naked_ , looking both delighted and affected. Maybe that was the most intoxicating part of this, actually-- Geralt was largely immune, by now, to Jaskier’s ridiculous coquettishness, but the fact that he was so obviously deeply sincere about it this time, and it wasn’t an idle flirtation-- well, that was definitely setting some responses thrumming throughout Geralt’s whole self. 

“Well,” Jaskier said. “Since you’re wooing me with ambient temperature, how could I disappoint?” He pulled his shirt off over his head, and Geralt admired him, the familiar shape of him-- he always wore his doublets cut to disguise how broad his shoulders were, as if he were trying to look slender and unthreatening, but really he had a lovely build, lanky but not rawboned. And there was a faint red mark on his neck, from Geralt’s teeth, already, and looking at it made him--

Jaskier made another really appealing prey-squeak as Geralt bit his collarbone. Geralt growled delightedly, grinding his hips downward into Jaskier’s to get a bit of pressure on his erection, lining them up together through both their pairs of trousers. “You keep making those noises, I’m going to fucking devour you,” Geralt promised. 

“Please,” Jaskier said, breathless, “please do,” shoving his hips upward. 

Geralt managed to pull himself away long enough to unfasten Jaskier’s trousers. Jaskier wriggled to help him, which set off his prey instinct again and made him pin the bard down and bite his shoulder, at the last second exerting enough willpower not to break the skin with his teeth. He’d said he wouldn’t leave marks. 

“Fuck,” Jaskier gasped. “Fuck, Geralt--”

Somehow he managed to get Jaskier’s trousers off him, and his braies, and then there was skin, and his scent was overwhelming-- the strongest notes in it were of happiness and relief, underscoring the arousal, and it made Geralt feel soft in the middle even as it made him hard elsewhere. 

Jaskier laughed suddenly. “Are you _smelling_ me?”

Geralt just growled in response, a contented noise. He’d spent so long, decades, with Jaskier’s scent, often tinged with arousal, but usually shading to wistfulness, unhappiness, pining, distress, frustration-- it wasn’t that he’d never smelled contented, but mostly he hadn’t, and it hadn’t been Geralt’s business to fix. 

“Get your kit off, you nut,” Jaskier said, shoving his fingers into the waistband of Geralt’s trousers, finding where their lacings were and unpicking them carelessly. Geralt growled again, not in the slightest bit annoyed, and heaved himself up just enough to strip himself out of his trousers, then kick them off his feet. He had to roll off of Jaskier to get his socks off, though, where one of his trouser legs had tangled, so he did that and then stood next to the bed for a moment, naked, looking down at Jaskier, who was sprawled out on the bed naked. 

“I like this,” Geralt said. “This is exactly what was missing from this room.”

“What, me?” Jaskier said, and half-pretended to preen coquettishly. The coquettishness lasted exactly half a second before he changed his mind and spread his legs instead, arching his back a little and trailing his fingers from his lip down his chest, baring his throat slightly. 

“You, naked,” Geralt said. “Hmmm. Like that.” He sucked on his lower lip for a moment as he surveyed the scenery-- not just Jaskier, who was pleasant to behold, but also the furs, the old carved headboard, the bed-hangings, the usual scent of the place; his familiar space, now upgraded by the companionship, Jaskier’s scent all twined through it. He wondered, a little wistfully, how long the scent would linger. But it wasn’t the time, yet, to be wistful. Instead he settled his weight back onto his heels, rolling his pelvis forward just a little, and took his cock in his hand and looked down at Jaskier, biting his lip and arching his eyebrows. “Yeah, that’s a good view.”

“Oh you’re just going to look?” Jaskier said, bending one knee to plant his foot, twisting his hips a little, rubbing his hand across his chest. “Am I doing a show? Or are we mutually enjoying the view, because honestly this is more than decent.”

“Better than the megascope,” Geralt said. 

“It’s in color,” Jaskier allowed.

“Also the megascope doesn’t carry scents,” Geralt said. 

“Mm, I suppose even I can appreciate scent in a situation like this,” Jaskier said, “though, not really at this distance, won’t you come a little closer?”

Geralt grinned, and knelt on the edge of the bed. “Since you asked nice,” he said. He rummaged in the box he kept on the nightstand, briefly inspecting and then discarding the dregs of half a dozen different salve jars. This box was where salve jars came to die, too empty to bother carrying anymore but not empty enough to just rinse out and refill with something else. A lot of them had herbs or essences in them incompatible with human biology, but he picked out one that merely had a nice scent oil in it-- just a tiny trace, enough for a human to barely notice it, and nothing dangerously medicinal at all. 

“Come here,” Jaskier said, and Geralt tipped down onto one hip, curling himself down to kiss Jaskier’s tilted-up face. Jaskier caught him by the side, sliding a hand along his ribs and curling it around his back, managing somehow not to snag on the scars. 

Jaskier put his hands in Geralt’s hair, eventually, which wasn’t something people usually did, and Geralt made an annoyed noise at him when he got his fingers stuck in Geralt’s hair tie and they had to stop to untangle him. He wound up having to remove the hairtie, so he threw it onto the bedside table and scrubbed his fingers through his loose hair, even though that would make it wild, because leaving it knotted would pull and he didn’t like the distraction.

It meant his loose hair was in their faces, which was also annoying, but Jaskier seemed to like it for some reason, and kept reaching up to gently push it back, giving Geralt such weirdly-soft expressions every time, and trailing his fingers along Geralt’s jaw and cheekbone and suchlike.

“I’m not the pretty one here,” Geralt pointed out, feeling weirdly self-conscious about being stared at. Jaskier had been staring at him for twenty years, obviously he liked doing it and there was no point fussing.

“Normally,” Jaskier said, “I’d agree, but. Fuck, Geralt, I need you to fuck me.”

“Well,” Geralt said, and flipped open the lid of the salve jar, “since you asked nice.”

It was both exactly as he’d maybe daydreamed a time or two, and nothing like it, as he worked his fingers into Jaskier’s body, and he said so, since he knew Jaskier would like that.

“You thought about it, hm?” Jaskier asked.

Maybe this had been-- maybe he’d overestimated how fun teasing Jaskier would be, relative to how shy it would make him feel to talk about it. “Sometimes,” he admitted, feeling uneasy. “Maybe.”

“The kind of thing that keeps you warm on a cold lonely night?” Jaskier asked, annoyingly composed even as he gasped and wriggled and tipped his head back, pulse fluttering attractively under the thin skin of his throat. “Fuck. Oh, Geralt, I cannot tell you how many times I sought the company of my own hand and thought about you doing-- oh, more or less this--”

“I could always smell it when you did that,” Geralt said, with a little glimmer of smug glee born of being on safer ground.

“Well I almost never did it when you were right there,” Jaskier said, and then gasped and shivered a little, and Geralt kept doing exactly what he’d just done and got him to twitch and make some fantastic noises. 

“You did it a lot,” Geralt said. “I could usually smell it for hours after, you know, even if you washed your hands. Inn rooms, by the campfire-- that time we were stuck hiding from the rain in the barn loft, bored--”

“Melitele’s sweet _lips_ ,” Jaskier said, and then made a fantastic little mewling noise, “Geralt, oh-- fuck-- Listen, you were wandering around barefoot and wielding a knife in nothing but wet underthings I could see right through, what the fuck was I supposed to do?” he demanded. “I-- you kept your distance so precisely-- I thought maybe you were actually deliberately putting yourself on display. I really couldn’t tell. If you hadn’t left I was going to have to do it in front of you.”

Geralt paused. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t think that time was about me.”

“Fuck,” Jaskier said, “do you have any idea what you look like?”

“I-- I know,” Geralt growled, self-conscious again. What did _that_ have to do with it?

“What about you?” Jaskier asked. “Did you ever get off thinking of me?”

“I,” Geralt said, a little flustered, “well-- I guess, yeah.” _No, it would have been too lonely_ , he did not say. He’d _thought_ about it. He hadn’t usually let himself _do_ anything about it. But that wasn’t a sexy thing to say.

“Did you think about my ass?” Jaskier asked. “My mouth? What did you think of doing?”

“I told you,” Geralt said, “exactly what I’m planning on doing to you right now,” and he resumed his hand’s motion. Jaskier’s cock was hard and leaking and he also kind of wanted to put his mouth on it but he also was pretty fixated on fucking him right now. 

“Fuck, get _in_ me,” Jaskier said unsteadily. 

“Yeah,” Geralt said.

Words failed Jaskier briefly during the ensuing process-- he was, fuck, _exquisite_ , and Geralt took longer about the whole thing than he strictly needed to largely in order to have adequate time to compose himself because if he was going to actually do this as thoroughly as he’d imagined, he was going to need to have pretty good control over himself. Jaskier wasn’t _quiet_ , but he didn’t actually produce any coherent, understandable language throughout the whole thing, mostly making half-voiced desperate panting gasping little sounds that made Geralt’s scalp tingle with desire to bite them out of him. He wanted to cover him, take him, flatten him, fill him, consume him-- it was intense, and overwhelming, and he had to hold himself still for a long moment, breathing hard, sensation zinging up his spine, his entire length sheathed inside Jaskier’s body.

“Gods,” Jaskier said, “oh gods, Geralt, fuck-- _fuck_ me.”

“I’m getting there,” Geralt gritted out, trying and failing to shake his hair out of his face. At least he’d just washed it, and it smelled pleasantly of herbs. That was sort of the problem, though-- freshly washed, it tended toward being both fluffy and slippery, and would not stay out of the way. “Fuck, Jaskier.”

“Yes, that’s the idea,” Jaskier said, mock-helpful.

Geralt got all his weight braced on one arm so he could reach in and grab Jaskier’s cock with the other, which certainly did the trick of scattering the infuriating composure that was letting Jaskier be sarcastic. “One way or another I am going to shut you up,” he growled. 

“Oh fuck,” Jaskier said, trying and failing to writhe, but managing a delightful sort of squirm. “Oh-- fuck, Geralt.”

“Yes,” Geralt said, and finally had himself under enough control to start to move his body, “that’s the idea.”

It was enough of a challenge to get Jaskier to the edge of coming but not let him go over it, that it quite did the trick of keeping Geralt back from the brink himself. He had to let go of Jaskier’s cock and hold him by the waist instead, and Jaskier flailed around a bit but settled easily enough into a gorgeous arched-back posture that from his wild-eyed panting seemed to be working pretty well for him. 

He’d been making great little noises throughout, but now they started to rise in volume enough that Geralt worried-- not about the keep full of Witchers who surely already knew what was going on and would be able to smell it on both of them even if they bathed before breakfast, but about Ciri sleeping in the next room. 

“Shh,” Geralt said, and Jaskier laughed. 

“You haven’t shut me up yet,” he said. 

“No,” Geralt said, “I’m aware, but don’t wake up the kid.”

“Fuck,” Jaskier said, and moaned. “I forgot,” he went on, and then cried out again on Geralt’s next stroke. “Fuck, I’m trying,” he said, and then made another noise that was almost a shout. 

Geralt put his hand over Jaskier’s mouth, because it was that or stop fucking him and he didn’t want to stop. He made some fantastic muffled whimpering noises that set off Geralt’s prey instinct again, and Geralt stopped holding himself up and let his weight down so he could reach to put his teeth into Jaskier’s collarbone, and growl into his ear. 

Jaskier either struggled or writhed or maybe both, and his noises, muffled now, grew more frantic and desperate, heartrate picking up and scent going blindingly aroused. 

“I know this is cheating,” Geralt said, low and rumbling in his ear, “and honestly I like the noises, but if she wakes up and comes out here and I have to stop I _won’t_ enjoy that.”

“Don’t stop,” Jaskier managed to gasp against his hand. 

“Doing my best,” Geralt said. Jaskier’s heart was beating so hard he was shaking with it, his hands scrabbling at Geralt’s shoulders and his thighs slick with sweat along Geralt’s flanks. It was affecting, and Geralt’s composure was starting to shred a little, what with the tight slickness and the trembling and the incredible scent and heat of blood in Jaskier’s throat right under Geralt’s nose and the soft yield of his skin under Geralt’s teeth and the taut thighs and the strain of his cock against Geralt’s belly and the rabbit-fast hammering of his pulse. 

Geralt tasted almost-blood and let go, his teeth were too sharp to fuck around like that, and he licked repentantly over the marks he’d accidentally left, and nuzzled in to the hollow of Jaskier’s throat instead where he knew better than to use his teeth, even a little. He pressed his tongue against the pulse-point instead, breathing open-mouthed to smell and taste him, keeping his lips over his teeth so he didn’t forget himself. 

“Perfect,” he breathed, because it was true, “perfect,” and Jaskier whimpered, shuddering. He scrubbed his jaw along the edge of Jaskier’s jaw, pulling his face back so he could look at Jaskier’s face, and Jaskier shivered, hard, tipping his head back. When Geralt looked, his eyes were glazed and distant, and rolled back a little in his head as he heaved for breath, head lolling a little. He was close, closer yet, and Geralt backed off a little, slowing down, watching Jaskier’s eyes roll open and blink to focus on him. 

“Geralt,” Jaskier said, into his palm, breathing hard.

Geralt took his hand away and kissed him instead, rocking into him slow and deep, tasting his breath, breathing his scent. Jaskier made a bunch of punched-out, desperate little sounds, writhing against him, clearly trying to get him to go hard again, and Geralt kept it deliberately just too slow, not quite hard enough, to tease him, keeping his mouth not quite tightly against Jaskier’s, lips just touching his, keeping distance no matter how Jaskier squirmed and wriggled. 

“Demon,” Jaskier panted, “ _nngh_ , come _on_ \--”

“You really think,” Geralt said, almost into his mouth, “that I’m going to let you,” he pulled back slightly to keep Jaskier from kissing him, “get off that easy,” and he bit the point of Jaskier’s chin, gently, “after waiting this long,” another kiss to his mouth, “and making all those,” he pulled back just enough that Jaskier couldn’t reach his mouth when he tried to chase the contact, “promises?”

“Geralt,” Jaskier panted, almost shrilly, sounding desperate. Oh, he was getting close again anyway. Good. “Ah, oh gods--”

“I know,” Geralt went on, “you weren’t the one who kept _me_ waiting,” and he gave him one good fast thrust, then slowed down again, “but still,” and he did it again, “I had to wait.” Jaskier mewled on his next fast thrust, scrabbling at his back, then shuddered, undulating under him. “Can you keep quiet for me?” Geralt asked, almost sweetly, and Jaskier gave a shuddering, desperate little gasping cry. “Or do I have to block your mouth again?” 

“Nngh,” Jaskier said, “Geralt,” breathless and quiet. “Fuck, oh, _gods,_ Geralt.”

Geralt kept varying his pace, giving him a little longer stretch of faster and harder, then a bit of slower, gentle, then a little more fast and hard, then another slower, gentle, and he could feel Jaskier’s body winding up tighter, clenching down around him. He wasn’t making as much noise, but his breathing was loud and ragged and his fingers were dug in around Geralt’s shoulder blades and his spine was a rigid arch. 

And he wasn’t talking.

Geralt’s control of himself was starting to fray, now. Decades of self-discipline were coming unspooled here, in the maddening slick clutch of Jaskier’s body, the thrum of his pulse and the scent of him. 

Fuck, he was getting close, but he didn’t want to slow down, as Jaskier seemed to be pretty close, too. He got his hand around Jaskier’s cock without upsetting his rhythm too much, and Jaskier made a fervent low sound, head tipping back. Geralt didn’t have the coordination left to do anything really clever, but he gave him just about all he had left, fucking him harder and faster. 

Jaskier writhed and then shuddered, his cock twitching in Geralt’s grip, and then finally-- finally-- he made a fantastic wordless half-breathless noise and shivered violently, convulsively, his inner muscles fluttering and his cock jerking. 

“Fuck,” Geralt said, and let go, and it took him about four or five more increasingly-ragged strokes to come too. He came hard enough that his eyes crossed and his toes curled and he lost track of whatever noises he made and precisely where all his limbs were, and came to himself a moment later still twitching pleasantly, intertwined with Jaskier’s body and with his face pressed into the hollow of the bard’s neck. 

Fuck, he smelled _so fucking good_. 

He got enough of himself together to push himself up a little so he wasn’t squishing the poor human-- it wasn’t that Jaskier was really insubstantial at all, but Geralt was quite a lot heavier than he was, and heavier even than a human of comparable size would be, and it had been complained of in the past. He meant to nuzzle sweetly at the corner of Jaskier’s jaw, and he did, but then he couldn’t resist scraping his teeth along the stubbled skin there, just a little, and perhaps the groan of satisfaction he let out was more of a growl after all. 

Jaskier made a flattened sort of whimpering noise, though it was identifiably not distress. Geralt nosed gently along the curve of his neck, putting his tongue out to feel his pulse where it was still hammering unevenly away at that soft point in his neck. He stayed right there, tongue pressed flat there, covering the pulse point, and breathed through his nose and mouth, as if he could fill himself up on the scent and keep it there forever. 

In a moment Jaskier took a deeper breath, clearly composing himself, and caressed Geralt’s hair with one hand, gently and deftly pushing it back where it belonged, unsticking it from his own skin. Geralt raised his head and looked at him. 

“Hmmmnn,” Jaskier said, letting his eyes cross slightly, and laughed. He was still breathing hard, eyes a bit glassy.

“If that wasn’t enough,” Geralt said, “I can give you more.”

He hadn’t entirely gone soft yet, and their bodies were still joined. He twitched his hips a little, and Jaskier sucked in a breath, thighs going taut against Geralt’s sides again, and let his breath out in a little almost-whimpery cry as Geralt moved a little more. It wasn’t a bluff; Geralt’s circulation was slow enough that he had in the past discovered himself to be capable of achieving a second erection before the first one had entirely gone down. 

Now, it wasn’t something he particularly _wanted_ to do, as it would take another half an hour or more before he had much sensation to work with. But for certain partners that was just fine, and he didn’t have to feel much to enjoy _their_ pleasure. 

He was pretty sure Jaskier didn’t want that, though. “That doesn’t sound like you particularly need more,” Geralt said, giving one last twitch of his hips.

“Mmn,” Jaskier said, “hnngh,” and his voice broke a bit shrill. Geralt kissed him, then, soft and quelling, and Jaskier put both hands on his face and held him by the jaw, then pushed his hair back again. “Geralt,” he managed, finally, unsteadily. 

Geralt had been assuming Jaskier was avoiding speech just to be funny, maybe to flatter him a little, but considered that maybe he actually _had_ succeeded at getting him nonverbal. He propped himself a little higher on his elbow and looked more fully into Jaskier’s face. No, Jaskier was done. 

Gently and with great care, he pulled himself out of Jaskier’s body, and then shifted the bard bodily over in the bed to get him under the blankets with room for Geralt next to him on the side he preferred. Jaskier laughed at being manhandled, and then submitted tamely to being cleaned up; he’d gone from glassy to sleepy, his face pink and his expression soft. Geralt lay down next to him, putting his feet under the blankets but not really the rest of him; it was almost too warm in here for his tastes. 

After the-- thing via megascope, Jaskier had talked about touching and petting and praise in the afterglow, and it had stuck in Geralt’s mind. Obviously that was something Jaskier would want. So he indulged him, and slid his hand under the blankets to run it meditatively over the planes of Jaskier’s body, and tucked himself close enough to kiss Jaskier on the head. 

Jaskier curled against him like he belonged there, and snaked an arm around his waist. But he still didn’t speak. His scent was intoxicating, sweet-spicy and saturated with contentment. And it was mingled with Geralt’s, now, changing it-- the heat of his blood warming and changing the scent Geralt’s mouth had left behind on his throat, the scent of Geralt’s sweat drying on his body and changing chemistry as it blended with his own-- the scent of Geralt’s spend and the fragrance oil in the salve, rubbed into his body, all mingled with the smell of the bedding which had been reasonably clean and recently-aired-- the old tanned furs and the linens washed in the soapwort from the garden here and smelling vaguely of the lichen on the walls where they were hung to dry--

Jaskier’s breathing evened out and went shallow as he slipped into sleep, and Geralt followed him after only a moment, carried along by the contentment in his scent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I restrained myself a bit but am still delighted I managed to work in mentions of 1) Lambert's Jar Of Pickled Wieners, 2) Geralt's youthful-and-ongoing obsession with trashy novels about courtly love, and 3) a very indirect reference to Witcher 3's ridiculous game mechanic of an insanely broad assortment of sword oils. 
> 
> My Witcher 3 game writeups continue under the [wee precious flower prince geralt](https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/tagged/wee-precious-flower-prince-geralt) tag, which I also figure I should organize on [Dreamwidth](https://dragonlady7.dreamwidth.org/tag/wee+precious+flower+prince+geralt) but I think I'll have to manually include them. (update: I did manually fix that so now all the entries are there and permanently archived, unlike Tumblr's absolutely bizarre relationship with the tag-search system.)
> 
> Apart from that, well-- I'm going to come out of quarantine in a week to go help on the farm and We Shall See how that goes. No, I still am not getting unemployment, and the school year is ending so the kids don't need help with homeschool maybe, but I have no idea what my life is going to look like on the far end of this and I just, don't care? It'll be fine or it won't. Other people have worse problems. Donate to your bail funds to help the protestors who are doing important work.


	15. Worth The Wait

Jaskier woke slowly, his body marvellously warm and his nose surprisingly cold, under heavy blankets, and with someone warm in the bed with him. He had to wake up a little to put the pieces together; it smelled of furs and of something comfortable and familiar, but the heavy, heavy blankets weren’t like an inn would have, and his bed companion was larger than he was and very warm but also naked and none of that really quite added up.

His mind had been attempting to identify the scent and size of his bed companion as Geralt, but Geralt had never slept naked with him, and while they would sleep close when necessary, he was pretty intertwined-- like, _intimately_ so, with a hip against Jaskier’s ass, and an arm over his midsection. But he came enough to wakefulness to remember how those pieces fit together, and indeed _specifically_ how those pieces had _fit together_ , and as that memory zinged down his spine he yawned and stretched, flexing his hips specifically to feel-- oh yes-- a delicious soreness all through him, sore muscles in his thighs and abdomen from the movements of it but also that undeniable and fantastic feeling of having been fucked long and hard, not quite a soreness but a deep _awareness_ in places he wasn’t normally so clearly aware of.

He moaned a little, enjoying it, and felt the person next to him react, sighing and stirring, and rubbing a big, callused hand across his stomach. Oh, that was Geralt all right, Jaskier would know his hands and the sounds of his breathing anywhere.

He opened his eyes, and Geralt was next to him, and it was too dark to see much of anything, but he caught a glint of familiar eyeshine. He yawned, and moaned again; he’d woken up hard, as he usually did, but the way his body felt, the slickness still between his thighs, and that gorgeous well-fucked feeling had him turned-on for real by now. “Is it morning?” he said.

“It is,” Geralt said, and did the little hand-sign to light the lamp by the bed, reaching over to adjust the flame as low as it would go. He propped his chin on his arm to look at Jaskier, with a funny soft little smile. His hair was loose and he looked-- Jaskier had never really seen him look like this before. “Sun won’t be up for a bit, though. Ciri probably won’t be up for a good hour, hour and a half.”

“Good,” Jaskier said, and leaned in to kiss Geralt. Geralt made a low humming growling sort of noise and returned the kiss, lazily but with some intent behind it, until Jaskier finally had to come up for air.

“You did pretty well last night,” Jaskier said, “keeping your promise.”

“You actually didn’t say anything besides my name for a good long while there,” Geralt pointed out, looking pleased and smug and yet at the same time, just the tiniest bit shy, which was _so_ fucking endearing.

“This is true,” Jaskier said. If he’d had to, he could probably have pulled himself together, but possibly the best part of the whole thing was that he’d known he didn’t have to. Geralt was still in the process of proving himself to be one of few people he could confidently drop the whole Jaskier act for and just be… a person, in a body, without a fence of words and bravado at all times.

“I’d figured it would take me a couple of attempts to get there,” Geralt said. “Now I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t have any other goals.”

“Mm,” Jaskier said. “It was-- you get full marks.”

“I thought maybe you were being cute about it,” Geralt said, “but if you were, that was a hell of a commitment to a schtick.”

“I wasn’t being cute about it,” Jaskier said, and shivered a little, remembering last night’s climactic events. “Fuck. But-- Geralt, at the end, when you were asking if I wanted to keep going--”

“I was done,” Geralt said, “but I was willing to keep going if you needed me to.”

“You’re sure you were done?” Jaskier asked.

“Yes,” Geralt said.

“How about now, though,” Jaskier said, freeing his uppermost arm from the heavy blankets and sliding it around Geralt’s waist. Feeling a bit daring, he slid it downward somewhat, and caressed Geralt’s ass, which-- well, he’d surely touched it before, but he hadn’t been in much of a frame of mind to appreciate it, specifically. So he took his time now, feeling how warm and soft the skin was, and confirming that it was exactly as firmly-muscled as it had always looked.

“Now I’m prepared to go a little easier on you,” Geralt said.

“Mm, _easy’_ s not what I’m after,” Jaskier said. Could he do this? He could do this. Realistically, could he do this? Yes, he certainly could. He brought his hand up and put it against Geralt’s shoulder and pushed him onto his back. Somewhat bemused, Geralt hesitated, then went along with it.

“You have something in mind,” Geralt said, as Jaskier rolled over on top of him. Geralt’s cock, hard as a rock, pressed hot as a coal against Jaskier’s belly.

“I do,” Jaskier said. He could always stop if it turned out his desire exceeded his capacity. He knew despite all the growling and ravishing and whatnot, Geralt would absolutely do whatever Jaskier asked, including stop, so there was very little real risk here. “Where’s that-- whatever that was, that you were using last night?” Something struck him. “That wasn’t, like, one of your sword oils, was it?”

Geralt laughed, a shocked little grunt of laughter. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t put any of those into a human body. Er, not one I wanted to still be alive afterward, anyway.”

“You’d put it on your dick, though,” Jaskier said, filling in what he hadn’t said.

“N,” Geralt said, and then paused, clearly thinking it over. “I’d have to be insane,” he finished. He retrieved a little jar from the table by the bed, and presented it to Jaskier.

“That wasn’t a no, though,” Jaskier observed, pulling the lid off. He sniffed the jar, just to be sure. It was a semi-solid substance and smelled only vaguely of some sort of spice, a dark rich faintly-sweet complex fragrance, but not overpowering.

“That one’s human-safe,” Geralt said innocently, clearly not planning on explaining which sword oil he had in fact used on his dick at some point in the past.

“I should hope so,” Jaskier said. He sat up, straddling Geralt’s magnificent thighs, wearing the blankets something like a cloak, and smoothed a coating of the vaguely fragrant substance down Geralt’s cock.

Geralt growled in, presumably, pleasure, hips hitching upward a little, but frowned a little at Jaskier. “What are you,” he began, but stopped when Jaskier leaned over to put the jar down on the side table and then moved himself forward, up Geralt’s body.

“Round two,” Jaskier said.

“Aren’t you-- don’t hurt yourself,” Geralt said, alarmed.

“I’m a big boy,” Jaskier said, hoping that he wouldn’t have to back off immediately. All right, some of the bravado was innate and couldn’t be switched off, it turned out. He knelt up over Geralt, and positioned himself carefully.

“Don’t you need--” Geralt said, actually reaching out to stop him, but he wound up just holding Jaskier’s hips and staring at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as Jaskier bit his lip and very, very carefully eased himself down onto Geralt’s cock.

“I’m still all fucking wet and open from last night,” Jaskier managed to get out, semi-coherently, not gasping _too_ much, “and it’s driving me crazy and I need-- nngh, fuck,” and he breathed through it and by sheer force of desire and will, pushed himself down until he’d taken the whole thing all the way in.

“Agh, fuck,” Geralt said fervently, closing his hands on Jaskier’s hips just a little too hard. His cock was so fucking big and so fucking hot and Jaskier tipped his head back and just breathed at how fucking good and also how fucking _much_ it all was.

Oh, oh, but he could take it, and it was good. He wasn’t exactly sore from last night but he was sensitive so all of him was lit up at the moment. He couldn’t take another pounding like that but he could take this; he shifted, just a little, moved his weight forward, and rolled his hips, so slowly, rocking himself just a little forward, then back. “Geralt,” he said, leaning forward and putting his hands on that broad chest, ah _fuck_ that was it that was the angle. He didn’t even need Geralt to move, he just needed him to stay still right fucking there and just-- be huge and hard and enormous and in him so gods-damned deep.

Geralt was staring up at him, looking almost dazed, his eyes just thin rims of gold around wide black pupils, and his hair spectacularly loose and fluffy, spread out on the pillow like a kind of halo, his lips parted and his breath coming fast. He was so beautiful like that, and-- almost worshipful, his expression was, open and awed, and maybe nobody had ever looked at Jaskier like that.

Maybe.

“Wh-- what do you need,” Geralt said indistinctly, his voice a quiet rumble and no more.

Jaskier groaned, mouth closed, and undulated his hips, just the smallest gesture, clenching his exhausted interior muscles down around the massive intrusion inside him. It was enough to make him shudder, and flex his spine just a little, hands braced against Geralt’s chest. He tipped his head back, and then slowly bent forward, clenched down as tightly as he could manage. It sent a shiver of pure pleasure zinging all through him, straight up his spine and down again.

“Hngh,” Jaskier said, and shivered, “I don’t need much, you’re plenty, just-- _ungh_ \--”

Geralt’s hips twitched up a bit and Jaskier bit down his moan, remembering about Ciri and remembering that there would be other listeners. Let them listen, he didn’t mind that at all, let Lambert figure out what was so cute about him after all, but he didn’t want Ciri running in here at hearing his voice and seeing him like this.

Although, he was still under most of the blankets, so it might not be all that bad. Still, an abrupt ending would be disappointing.

Enough of his mind was still under his control that he remembered Yennefer letting slip that if you praised Geralt he didn’t know what to do with the pleasure of it. Jaskier settled himself into a not-quite-rhythm of very gentle but intense little rocking motions, letting his abdominal muscles do a lot of the work, and gathered what composure he could muster, and started talking.

“Gods, you’re so-- perfect, Geralt, that’s so good, that’s what-- just like that-- I knew you’d take care of me, I knew I could trust you not to hurt me-- you’re so _good_ , Geralt, you’re always so decent-- you’d never really hurt me--”

Geralt looked pained, maybe, holding Jaskier’s hips with great focus. “I’ve hurt you plenty,” he said, but it was somewhat strangled; this was working for him, on some level.

“Never,” Jaskier said, “never beyond repair-- oh Geralt-- I get it now, why you waited so long, I really do-- aah, fuck, yes, oh fuck, just like-- just like that-- that’s-- oh fuck-- you’re so good to me, you’re so _good_ \--”

“I’m _not_ ,” Geralt insisted nonsensically, holding Jaskier’s hips so carefully (they were already bruised from that moment earlier but it felt so good and he was being firm but gentle now) and pushing up into him just the tiniest bit, so tightly-controlled, and Jaskier was hanging onto his shoulders now and staring down into his face and he was going to be sore today but it felt amazing in the moment, hot and intense and everything was so much. But he kept his words, and gazed down into Geralt’s dazed face, and told him with an undeniable fervency how good he was.

“I’ve always known,” Jaskier said, “and I was right, I could trust you-- if it took you twenty-two years to decide I was ready then that was right, Geralt, ah fuck, I’d’ve been an idiot then and made you break me in half--” he had to stop to pant for breath-- “fuck, I’m so close, oh fuck, Geralt, I’d’ve used you to hurt myself and then left-- ahh-- you to deal with it, and I-- oh fuck-- oh fuck-- oh-- oh!! Geralt! Oh that’s-- you perfect thing-- your perfect cock-- oh sweet Goddess, help and preserve--” that last bit was an annoying little automatic routine drilled into him in Temple school, and he wrestled control back and let himself rock just a little harder, Geralt was biting his lips now to keep control but was fucking up into him in helpless little motions. “Oh Geralt, if you need-- _hah_ \-- oh-- we’ve got to do this with Yen, she and I could take turns on-- oh fuck--” He was staring down into Geralt’s face, and Geralt was gazing up at him fixedly, stunningly beautiful, but Jaskier had started to pick up that praising Geralt’s _appearance_ didn’t get you anywhere, so he stuck to his other virtues.

“Geralt,” he said, “yes, perfect, just keep-- you’re so good to me-- you’re so good-- you perfect thing--”

He’d been inwardly considering what to do when he finished long before Geralt did, because he knew he couldn’t take it if Geralt needed to keep fucking him afterward-- he was going to be too sensitive-- so he wasn’t at all prepared when Geralt suddenly tipped his head back and shuddered violently, arching his back and making a strangled little series of exquisite noises. Oh-- he was coming, just from this, from almost no movement--

“Oh _gods_ ,” Jaskier said, “that’s so fucking _hot_ , Geralt, _come in me_ ,” and he rode it out, awfully close himself but not quite there and everything felt like sparks and melting and he was _so_ wet now, so messy, he was probably still talking but he couldn’t really control it much and it was just positively-tinged nonsense gibberish now about Geralt’s various virtues and his cock and Jaskier was losing coordination and oh fuck, he was so close, he was-- Geralt was still plenty hard enough for this and still so hot and it was all so hot and Jaskier’s cock was rock-hard and leaking everywhere.

And Geralt was so good, he was _so good_ , he was so _fucking_ good, it was so hard not to make a whole lot of noise but Jaskier was doing his best and he tipped his head down and let it hang close to Geralt’s and put his hand on his own cock and tugged on it maybe twice and then he was lost, his whole body clenching in big long endless spasms, waves of bliss, Geralt’s hands on his hips and Geralt’s eyes on his face and Geralt’s mouth on his mouth breathing his breath.

Jaskier came to himself in a moment in a limp pile of sticky limbs, on his side but still partly collapsed atop Geralt, who was petting him in an absently dazed sort of manner.

Jaskier was doing the same, with not much conscious volition. He blinked, took a breath, and managed a grin at Geralt, who had been staring sightlessly at him. “I knew it,” he said.

“Hm?” Geralt blinked as well.

“I knew that would work,” Jaskier said. “Anyone else, I couldn’t trust not to go too hard but I knew you’d keep control.”

Geralt huffed out a weak laugh, but his smile was real and the resignation, clearly, was put-on. “Glad I could serve,” he said.

Jaskier noticed, then, the splatter of his own spend that was glistening across Geralt’s chest. “Oh fuck,” he said, and drew his fingers through it. “That looks well on you.”

Geralt laughed at that, a real laugh. “I earned it, didn’t I?”

“If that’s the largesse I could toss you,” Jaskier said, “well, you certainly did earn it.” He smeared his thumb through it and kissed Geralt’s shoulder. “It’s not that I don’t have a fairly thorough collection of yours, on my own account.”

“In,” Geralt corrected him.

“I don’t usually refer to that part of my anatomy as _my account_ ,” Jaskier said.

“Could start some new slang,” Geralt mused, tonguing at his lip absently. He wiped at his sticky chest with his fingers, then looked at his fingers, and this close Jaskier could hear the intake of breath as he took in the scent, watched his jaw work as he analyzed it. His eyes fluttered closed for a semi-involuntary instant and then rolled dazedly back open before focusing again, which was _incredibly_ hot. “Nice thing about living here instead of just camping, you can pretty much always get a bath,” Geralt went on, wiping his fingers on the sheet as if he didn’t have to do his own laundry around here, but who else would do it? “Or I can just get you a basin, how thorough do you want to be?”

“As long as _I_ can’t smell myself, I’m good,” Jaskier said. “Though… I’ll probably want a bath later.”

“I imagine you might be a bit sore later,” Geralt said, and he’d had that fond look before but never been so _obvious_ about it. “I really thought you were crazy when you climbed onto me, but I see you did know what you were about.”

Jaskier laughed. “Well,” he said. “I did a little mental calculation and I knew if I decided it was too much for me after all, you wouldn’t give me _too_ hard a time for backing down.”

“I’d only tease you a little,” Geralt said, retrieving something-- a dirty shirt-- and wiping himself off before rolling over to pin Jaskier gently to the bed and clean him up as well, kissing his neck and shoulder and pretending to hold him down.

Jaskier pretended to struggle, pausing to gasp inarticulately as Geralt fingered him semi-playfully, semi-intentionally. “Ah fuck,” he said, squirming, “ _ah_ \--” The last bit went a little shriller than he’d intended.

Geralt held still, and bit his neck gently. “I think more of that is off the menu, tonight,” he said, returning to cleaning Jaskier up, but not letting him free.

“Depends on if there’s any horseback riding on today’s agenda,” Jaskier said. “But we’ll see.”

Geralt kissed him then, and it was difficult to tell whether he was trying to start something or just getting all his physical affection out now while there were no witnesses. If Jaskier had been in his twenties, it might have gone somewhere, but as it was, he was happy enough to just enjoy the hot slick slide of Geralt’s mouth and the warm weight of his body.

Geralt put his teeth on Jaskier’s collarbone again and Jaskier laughed. “Please,” he said, “please, really, don’t leave marks.”

“Sorry,” Geralt said, licking over the spot he’d bitten. He sounded a little sheepish. Jaskier craned his neck enough to see that there were a few marks, little bruises, and one place Geralt’s teeth had broken the skin.

“You’re impossible,” he said fondly. And then, possibly because he was drunk with pleasure and fondness, he said, “Thank you for not fucking me when I was a stupid kid.”

Geralt glanced up then, eyebrows quizzical. “Yeah?” he said. “I figured you were mad at me for wasting all that time.”

“No,” Jaskier said. “I mean, yeah, it would’ve been great to have all that sex, and I feel like I could’ve kept up with you better when I was young maybe, but I was absolutely trying to use you to hurt myself and it would’ve been a disaster and you don’t deserve to be treated like that. And then we couldn’t have had this. So, no, it wasn’t wasted time, and it was worth the wait.”

“I didn’t have to be quite such a cock about it,” Geralt mumbled into Jaskier’s neck.

“Well,” Jaskier said. “I could’ve done without some of that, to be sure, but. The overall point remains. At least you didn’t fuck me and _then_ pull that shit.”

“That was partly what I was trying to avoid,” Geralt said quietly. “It just seemed… you just seemed like a bad idea.” He raised his head and hastily backtracked, a little wide-eyed. “Not-- not like-- not _bad_ , I just-- it seemed unwise. I don’t--”

Jaskier laughed. “No, you said it right, I was a bad idea.”

“We’d better get you cleaned up,” Geralt said.

Far away, in a perfumed bed enclosed by rich tapestries, Yennefer lay listening to Jaskier gasp and curse and praise Geralt, listening in with that ring Jaskier still had on his finger.

Last night Geralt had given him the same treatment he’d given her many a time, the one where he was big and growly and hard and fucked like a man putting on a performance. Only, he hadn’t bitten her so much-- possibly because she’d have killed him if he disobeyed and left a mark, but she hadn’t had to reprimand him either.

(She’d come around to Jaskier’s sentiment on the beard, though. She wasn’t fond of the look of it but the feel of it during sex-- the unabrasive scrape of it-- all right. That was good. That was _hot_ , to use Jaskier’s word for it.)

She still couldn’t tell how much of what she felt for Geralt was really her feelings, and how much was the djinn. Maybe it _was_ all genuine. He really was attractive, and attentive in the kind of way that made him good in bed, and-- damn it, he was an oblivious sack of rocks half the time, and it made him an idiot, but he was kind of a genius about certain things, and overall he was just so goddamned _decent_ it was impossible not to find him compelling, at least in certain ways, and--

She rolled over in frustration, irritated and horny. Fuck, she was going to have to masturbate about it, which was undignified, but--

“Oh,” Jaskier was gasping, shuddering, staring down into Geralt’s face, “we’ve got to do this with Yen, she and I could take turns on-- oh fuck--”

She groaned in mingled frustration and blinding horniness, and stuck her hand down her underpants. Too fucking right she was going to have to join in with them. Gods, and now that she’d managed to get Geralt to admit that it was something he was willing to do, she was going to fuck him senseless with the replica of his cock. Between herself and Jaskier, she was pretty sure they’d be able to crack Geralt’s composure like an endrega’s carapace and suck out all the juicy good bits of his messy interior, knock him right out of that show he usually put on and find out what he was really like, when he had nothing to hide behind.

His performance last night had been fun but not so terribly compelling; it was just that, a performance. But this morning he was off-balance, unguarded, and it was so much more interesting.

Through Jaskier’s perception she watched Geralt shudder helplessly through a strikingly pretty orgasm, flat on his back with his head tipped back, panting out inarticulate little cries. Oh she was going to make him _cry_ , she was, next time she got her hands on him--

By the time Jaskier came, Yennefer had worked herself up to the brink, and she managed to bring herself off before Jaskier said anything stupid, as he inevitably would. A lot of people got pleasure-drunk off of a good orgasm, and that was when you could get them to say ridiculous things, or answer unwise questions. (But as for foolish promises, well, it was best to extract those _before_ orgasm.)

She sighed, and rolled over onto her back, relaxing into the cushions. Now she had to consider the logistics, which were not inconsiderable.

However. They were also not insurmountable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trapped at the farm by a pending COVID test in the immediate household. If it's negative, there's a tiny family reunion I get to go to-- throw my niece in the car and drive 10 miles to my parents' to see the other niblings, who've relocated their isolation from 300 miles away to here so their mom can do a work thing. If it's positive, well, then I'm in it now aren't I. They said 48-72 hours for a result and we'll hit 48 in 45 minutes.   
> I guess if I had to get trapped anywhere I'd rather it was here. There's always stuff to do and if I did get sick, I know I'd actually let my sister take care of me, rather than pretending I was fine or being too cranky to accept help. So, I might actually be the most sanguine I've been about this since the beginning, but I am also _mightily_ distracted from _many_ things I ought to be paying much closer attention to, such as, well, *gestures broadly around at the world in general*, so, I mean.   
> It's a lot.
> 
> Anyhow-- I know this chapter's a tiny bit short but I thought, you know what, we all deserve a little bit of slobberingly incoherent lovemaking just now, with some good feelings-dump besides. I really, really felt like I had to have Jaskier directly address the trope I'm seeing so much in other fic about All That Wasted Time, because that all reeks, to me, of an unhealthily youth-obsessed culture. On a slightly TMI personal level, let me tell you I have _vastly superior_ sex with a cisgender 40-year-old man than I did with that same guy at 22, and it is one thousand percent a _myth_ that younger is better for male sexual partners (I specify _male_ because so many of the stories seem preoccupied with that), and also, this entire rhetoric that if you don't go for something when you're young you've wasted your youth and it's so tragic-- no, my loves, no, it is okay to have things progress on a different timescale, and you can experience something and have it not work out and still get a tremendous benefit from what you learned from it!
> 
> So, anyway. <3 <3 <3


	16. A Threefold Remove

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lambert doesn't trust like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hm, I don't think there are any particular trigger warnings? 
> 
> Mm, here's one maybe-- IDK how to tag this, which might make someone uncomfortable partly because it's from a semi-unreliable-narrator POV and he never manages to articulate to himself what's really going on-- Geralt finds several people including Ciri wearing makeup that to him looks like the kind sex workers wear, and is uncomfortable associating Ciri with that, but it's mostly out of a buried concern for her safety rather than anything darker.

Eskel’s medallion humming woke him up.

It hummed a lot, lately. He’d meant to ask Geralt if he got used to it or what, being around sorceresses; they were constantly doing magical shit and setting the medallion off.

He’d fallen asleep in Triss’s bed. He hadn’t really meant to, but then she’d noticed the constant low hum from her warming charms was bothering him, and so she’d cancelled all the charms to make him more comfortable, which meant she was relying on his body heat, and it had seemed churlish to get his rocks off and then immediately leave and make her re-cast all her warming charms.

So he’d stayed, and had slept better than he’d expected; he wasn’t the kind of guy who needed regular orgasms or particularly cared about getting held afterward (that was Geralt, not him) but it wasn’t exactly unpleasant. He’d noticed her leaving the bed this morning, before dawn, but hadn’t bothered really waking up.

But now she was doing something magic, and that meant he had to at least crack an eyelid.

Out beyond the bedcurtains there was light flickering, but absolutely no sound, and he could pretty much tell right away she’d cast a silencing spell, that was what had woken him up. He rolled over, and peeked around the edge of the bedcurtain.

She was using a little device, clearly talking to it and listening to an answer. Like the megascope maybe, only this one wasn’t showing an image of anyone, it was just glowing unevenly. He wondered if it was Yennefer, or someone else.

Spying on her didn’t do any good. He rolled back over, sat up, and found his smallclothes at least. Ah, his trousers were there too, at the edge of the bed. And his socks. But his shirt had been shed earlier in the proceedings. He dressed in what he could find, and then slipped out of the bed, yawning and mumbling to himself a little, shoving a hand through his hair and scratching his scalp and generally doing bleary morning-y things, maybe putting it on a little more than he needed to-- but that was the luxury of being in the keep, one could grumble one’s way slowly awake, rather than starting up fully alert.

By the time he came around the side of the bed, Triss glanced up from her little magical device, and it had stopped flickering but she hadn’t put it away. She gestured, and he didn’t hide his flinch as his medallion gave a short sharp pulse-- she’d dispelled the silencing charm.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling. She was looking at his hair, which must be sticking up-- he’d just disarranged it, it wasn’t surprising.

“Seen my shirt?” he said, and then caught sight of it, shed over next to the fireplace. “Ah.” He picked it up and shook it out. He’d had a jacket somewhere. Things had gotten a little heated, last night. Pulling his shirt on gave him a moment to contemplate his course of action: wait for her to tell him what she was doing, pretend he didn’t care, or just plain ask her and see if she’d tell him.

His head emerged from the neck of the garment, he tugged it into place, and looked over at her, having decided on the third option. “What’s that?” he asked.

He was under no illusions, here, that they were soulmates or even really confidants; they were adults with compatible sexual appetites, who were growing mildly fond of one another, but he was a Witcher, and she was a mage, and each of them was insanely dangerous.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s a-- you can talk, through it. Distance communication device. It’s called a xenovox. It’s not as sophisticated as a megascope but it’s much faster to set up. This one is connected to my former teacher Tissaia, she was giving me some news.”

So she _would_ tell him. Eskel finished getting his shirt settled as he considered that. She could’ve been lying; a little breezy lie wouldn’t change her scent much. But he couldn’t think why she would. She didn’t seem offended at him asking, at least. “Good news, I hope,” he said, and retrieved his jacket from where it had fallen, or more properly been flung, near the door.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “One of our comrades we thought had died at Sodden has just gotten back in touch with her. He’s alive!”

“Oh,” Eskel said, “that’s good.” He hadn’t really paid heed to the accounts of the battle. Battles weren’t his strong suit. “I should, uh. I should read Jaskier’s pamphlet about it so I know what you’re talking about, huh?”

Triss smiled fondly at him. “It’s all right,” she said, “it’s probably not all that relevant at the moment.” She put the little device away, into an intricate little carved clamshell box, and stood up to slide a hand inside the jacket he hadn’t fastened up yet. Her hand was cold through the fabric of his shirt.

“Brr,” he said, “I see I’ve been falling down on the job as your warming-charm replacement.”

“I didn’t think before I cast that silencing charm,” she said. “It might have disturbed your rest less if I’d just-- talked to her.” She kept her hand tucked up against his ribs, clearly to steal body heat, but ran the fingers of her other hand over the edge of his medallion, looking contemplative.

“I’d be awake soon enough either way,” Eskel said, with an unconcerned shrug.

As if to punctuate his words, a shriek echoed down the hallway; it was Ciri, and it was clearly an amused shriek. Geralt was likely engaging in horseplay with her. Triss’s hearing was decent, but she looked up in alarm. “What’s-- is that Ciri?”

Eskel cocked his head a little. “Sounds like Geralt’s horsing around,” he said. “She’s laughing.” Sure enough, a man’s laugh came echoing in a moment. An unfamiliar voice, but an instant’s contemplation and Eskel had sorted it: Jaskier. “They’re probably being goofs,” he said.

“I like that Jaskier,” Triss said. “I hadn’t expected to. I think Yennefer’s _quite_ fond of him, though.”

“He’s been hanging out with Geralt for something like twenty years,” Eskel said. “I met him pretty early on, thought he was a good kid. He grew some common sense at some point but not enough to stop hanging around with Geralt.”

Triss laughed. “ _You_ haven’t stopped hanging around with Geralt,” she pointed out.

“That’s different,” Eskel said, “I don’t have a choice.” He peered at the looking-glass she had hanging on the wall, which as far as he could tell was a perfectly ordinary looking-glass. In its reflection, he fixed his tousled hair and made it look a little less like he had just rolled out of a woman’s bed after a fairly extensive fuck session. He wasn’t going to bathe, so they’d all be able to smell it, but that was something else entirely. He was pretty sure that compared to Geralt his debauchery was going to be beneath notice.

If it wasn’t a perfectly ordinary looking-glass, well, now it had a recording or something of him doing that. Maybe in a hundred years he could scare somebody. That’d be entertaining, in an abstract kind of way.

Triss reached up and flipped one small segment of hair to the other side of his part, and then patted his cheek, the side with the scars-- she never seemed to pay any particular notice to them either way, which was novel and somewhat pleasant. “You look darling,” she said, which was not something anyone had ever said to Eskel before in his life.

“Let’s go get some breakfast,” Eskel said, rather than reflect on that.

Ciri dragged herself out of bed as the room began lightening toward another dreary day. It wasn’t so bitterly cold as usual, she thought, and then remembered that was partly because Geralt had fixed up the window so it didn’t leak air so much, because he’d been fixing up all the windows, because--

Jaskier was visiting! She flung herself into her clothes and threw open the door into Geralt’s room.

Geralt was standing there in the middle of the room with no shirt on whatsoever, but wearing his trousers and the sheepskin boots he wore when they weren’t going to go outside much. His hair was damp and combed and freshly tied back, and he was holding a towel in his hands.

“Jaskier?” Ciri said.

“Darling,” Jaskier’s voice said, “I’m half-dressed, give me one moment.” He was behind the curtains around Geralt’s bed.

“We didn’t wake you up, er, talking, did we?” Geralt asked Ciri, putting the towel down and picking up his shirt. It was a clean shirt, which meant he wasn’t planning on doing indoor exercises with her either, which meant this was definitely going to be either a lazy day or a book day. Ciri grinned to herself as he pulled the shirt over his head. “Jaskier got in somewhat late and we were talking down in the main hall and then we came up and just kept talking. You know how he is.”

“You didn’t wake me,” she said, and pouted. “I missed all the talk in the main hall!”

“You hate when we talk in the main hall,” Geralt said. “It’s always boring adult stuff.”

“Not with Jaskier,” Ciri pointed out.

“If you don’t get to sleep early enough you’re a bear,” Geralt said. “That’s not my fault. We’ll talk today, anyway.”

“That we will,” Jaskier said, coming out from behind the bed-hangings. He was freshly-scrubbed and dressed in some truly ornate brocade, but more layers of it than normal. Ciri shrieked and flung herself at him, and knocked him over, back through the bed-hangings and onto Geralt’s bed.

“Oof,” he said, pretending she’d knocked the wind out of him. “You’re bigger. Also I’m not a Witcher, you can’t knock me around like them.”

Geralt took her by the shoulders and lifted her off Jaskier, and she held onto Jaskier so he got dragged off the bed and Geralt had to lift both of them. He could, so he did, and he growled at her and she giggled about it.

“Mercy,” Jaskier said, “have mercy on a poor mortal.”

Ciri let go of him then, and instead turned quick as a cat to leap on Geralt, intending to knock _him_ over. She did succeed in staggering him back a step but then he had her, and in barely a moment of grappling he’d swung her up so that he had her neatly pinioned over his shoulder. “I got her,” Geralt said. “Grab my tunic and coat, there, will you, Jaskier? This is the only way we’re going to get to breakfast with all of us alive.”

“Let me down,” Ciri protested, but she was laughing too hard to do more than ineffectively drum her fists against his back.

For some reason, Lambert was leaning against the table in the dining hall with a particularly amused expression when they came in, arms crossed over his chest and eyebrows up near his hairline. “What’s this,” he said, as Geralt set Ciri down like a sack of potatoes.

“Some salvage,” Geralt said. “Thought maybe it was worth melting down, selling as ingots.”

“Mm,” Lambert said, “could be. What kind of weight we talking?”

“At least 80 pounds,” Geralt said, “though some of that’s likely slag.”

“If you melt her down you lose the value of the workmanship,” Jaskier protested.

“I don’t have an expert’s eye for that,” Geralt said, and even Ciri could tell he was giving Jaskier a fond look.

Lambert made a funny sort of choking noise, and Ciri looked at him in confusion. He returned her gaze innocently, having hastily composed himself.

“You are all full of nonsense,” Vesemir said, setting down the big cast iron kettle on the table, steaming gently, so they could each brew their own tea to their liking. Then, he inclined his head politely to Jaskier. “Good morning, bard.”

“Good morning, Master Vesemir,” Jaskier said.

“I trust your night was pleasant,” Vesemir said.

“It was,” Jaskier said, warmly sincere. “You have a charming home.”

Lambert made the funny choking noise again, and Ciri shot him a look. He made a face back at her, rolling his eyes.

She sat up. “I’m not salvage,” she said.

“No,” Jaskier said, sitting down next to her and putting his arms around her. She leaned into it, wrapping herself around him so he couldn’t extricate himself. “No, dear, you’re not salvage, you’re treasure,” he went on, quieter.

She sighed happily; he smelled familiar, like himself and his various grooming products and the laundry soap he preferred to use and the familiar half-forgotten scent of expensive incense like nobles stored their winter clothes with through the off-season, and his shape was familiar, and she’d missed him and had begun to get worried once they’d admitted Nilfgaard would be looking for him to find her.

“I’m glad to see they haven’t starved or beaten you to death yet,” he said, tilting the side of his face down against her hair.

“No, they haven’t,” Ciri said. She curled her fingers into the front of his jacket. He smelled a little like Geralt, actually. Well, he’d probably shared Geralt’s bed, like when they were traveling. She lifted her head up and looked at his face. Did he still look sad? “You looked so sad on the megascope call,” she said. “And thin, Jaskier, you look thin. Was your trip back to Oxenfurt terribly hard? I thought you’d be cold, on your own.”

He smiled at her, mouth twisting a little. “No, darling, I was fine,” he said. “I know how to wheedle my way into the warmest spot, by the fire. And I’ve made most of that trip many times before.”

“Then why are you so sad?” she asked.

He grinned at her. “I’m not, now,” he said. “I’m here.”

It was hard not to grin like a fool at Ciri and Jaskier, but Geralt mostly managed to confine himself, he’d thought, to occasional indulgent smiles. Lambert’s knowing leer suggested he wasn’t really doing a very good job of keeping his reactions under wraps, but the anticipation of future teasing wasn’t enough to dampen his enjoyment in this moment.

He tore himself away from watching them snuggle and banter on the bench at the table, and went into the kitchen to help Vesemir and Coen get the rest of breakfast ready. In a moment, Eskel came in, and he caught the scent of Triss on him and gave him a knowing look, aware he’d get the same in return.

Eskel caught him by the elbow as the others filed out with the food and dishes. “You ever heard of a xenovox?” he asked, his voice so low as to be near-silent.

Geralt shook his head.

“Little communication thing, magical,” Eskel said. “Well, anyway, Triss was talking to someone on one this morning, and had a silencing charm on so I couldn’t hear what she said.”

“Hm,” Geralt said.

Eskel shrugged. “I don’t know what it means,” he said, “I just didn’t want to be the only one who knew about it.”

Geralt nodded. It wasn’t that either of them had to be exactly _suspicious_ of her, but it was never a good idea to forget how dangerous a sorceress was.

He sat at the table next to Jaskier, who still had Ciri close enough that she might as well be glued to his other side. Triss had sat down across from Jaskier, and Eskel sat next to her. “Oh,” Eskel said to Triss, “you should tell Jaskier-- for his book-- you said one of your comrades from Sodden is alive?”

Geralt felt Jaskier perk up, his attention sharpening on the sorceress-- they’d been having an amusing, desultory conversation about manners or something, and Eskel had just dropped a new topic in like a stone into still water, but Eskel’s forte had never really been delicate conversation or witty banter so why would he start now?

“Which one?” Jaskier asked. “What news, now?”

Triss laughed. “Ah,” she said, “of course, your book. Well, this morning I heard from Tissaia de Vries,” and she paused, and Jaskier nodded enthusiastically, since he clearly knew of her. “And she’d heard from Vilgefortz of Roggeveen. We lost contact with him during the Battle of Sodden and he’d shown no sign of activity, and had been presumed lost, but he reached out to her just yesterday and she confirmed that it truly is him. We’re all quite excited; he was kind of a mastermind of our strategy, there, and fought very bravely. The battle would have gone quite differently without him.”

“Yes,” Jaskier said thoughtfully, “Yennefer had noted his contributions in her notes for me. That is excellent news.”

“She’s given me a method to contact him,” Triss went on, “so I’ll be working on that later today. It would be good to hear his insights and find out where he’s been.”

Jaskier was tense against Geralt’s shoulder, enough so that he looked at the bard’s face, somewhat surprised to see that his expression was relaxed, polite, vaguely pleasant; he didn’t feel or smell anything like his expression suggested he ought to. “Wonderful,” he said, and he had his left hand on the table and was absently turning a ring on his index finger with his thumb, so that the purple stone set into it caught the light a bit. “I don’t pretend to know anything of your methods, but have you a way of doing so without revealing your location?”

Triss looked mildly surprised, then thoughtful. “Oh, you mean if someone’s eavesdropping,” she said.

“Right, like with the portals,” Jaskier said. “How you’ve been opening a lot at once.” He took a plate of food that Coen handed him with a grateful nod, and went on, “You could ask Yennefer to help.”

Triss blinked. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t know that it’s necessary.” She shrugged. “I’m just going to use the megascope. Your conversation partner can fairly easily divine your location from it, but no one else can pick it up. Elsewise I wouldn’t have been letting you use mine so easily. All you need is the correct incantation, and since I have his now, I can just contact him, and there won’t be eavesdroppers.”

“But he’ll know where you are,” Jaskier said.

Triss nodded. “Well, yes,” she said. “But that’s all right, he’s a trusted member of the Brotherhood.”

All right, now Geralt understood Jaskier’s tension. He frowned. “How did Tissaia verify his identity?” he asked, thinking that might be the most tactful way to approach this. Eskel’s frown was deeper than his; he knew the other Witcher’s impulse had been to point out that generally, the occupants of Kaer Morhen were against alerting mages to their presence on principle. It would be hard to state that, tactfully.

“Oh, he had given her a xenovox some time ago,” Triss said. “And--” Her expression had gone a little wary, and closed off a bit more. Sorceresses didn’t like being questioned. “It’s not something that’s easy to explain to a lay person,” she said. “But be assured, there’s no question.”

“And he’s been missing all this time,” Jaskier said. “How incredible. I should be so interested in his account of what befell him, why he wasn’t able to contact anyone before now-- does it take a lot of magic to power a xenovox?”

“No,” Triss said, “not an enormous amount, but they’re generally keyed to a user, and so one can only make the contact go one way. So Tissaia couldn’t have contacted him with it, he had to reach out to her. And the one I have, only Tissaia can contact it, and I can’t reach out to her.” Jaskier’s earnest interest had opened her back up, a little, though her smile seemed slightly condescending. Eskel was still frowning, but since he was next to her, she didn’t see.

“Hm,” Geralt said, but she clearly wasn’t seeing anything suspicious in someone not being able to use an easy-to-use magical device for a span of some months to let his presumed friends and allies know he wasn’t dead.

He shouldn’t have made a sound, should have let Jaskier keep the lead on the conversation, but of course he didn’t realize that until Triss glanced over at him and her expression shuttered again. Fuck, he hadn’t meant to look so doubtful about it.

Jaskier twirled the ring on his finger again. It was an unfamiliar ring; he hadn’t been wearing it when they’d last traveled together. It caught Geralt’s eye and he wondered, suddenly, if it were magical. His medallion wouldn’t register it, likely, if it was a passive object.

“So,” Jaskier said brightly. “Vilgefortz. How interesting. I’d have to review my notes on him, I can’t recollect his background precisely, offhand, but I should be delighted to find out what he has been up to all this time. Perhaps he has more information for us on what Nilfgaard has accomplished. Do you think you’ll be contacting him soon?”

“I do plan on it,” Triss said.

Geralt looked over at Eskel, a little grimly, and Eskel returned the look, equally grim. They didn’t want this. Having one sorceress, personally vouched for by Geralt, was one thing, but his trust did not extend to this other person. Geralt was casting about for something to say when Jaskier laid a hand on his arm, and gave him a small smile with an odd meaningful emphasis to it. Geralt wasn’t sure what it could possibly mean, but it seemed clear Jaskier wanted him to hold his tongue. Not a bad instinct, given Geralt’s earlier misstep.

“Well,” Jaskier said, “I won’t ask to sit in, especially as I’m so busy today, but I’d love to hear whatever you’re able to share with me. And if there are sensitive revelations, have no doubts as to my discretion-- a number of things I knew a great deal of detail about were not included in the account I wrote of the battle because I knew they were things that it would profit Nilfgaard to know about, for future strategic use. I only want a thorough accounting so that in the future, when all is settled, I might know enough to make a clear report of it, once the events are long past enough that knowledge is no longer decisive.”

“Of course,” Triss said, but her expression had gone opaque.

Geralt caught Eskel’s eye and held it for a moment, and Eskel’s expression changed from a grim glower to a confused frown. Geralt tilted his head up slightly, squinting one eye a little-- _wait_ , he tried to communicate, and Eskel looked thoughtful but didn’t say anything.

After breakfast, Ciri obligingly peeled herself off of Jaskier long enough to distract Triss in conversation. Geralt hadn’t asked her to do that, but it was fantastic. He could dimly overhear that she was excitedly requesting another tea party, and if everyone could come and dress up, and that Jaskier would surely be so much fun at a party like that, and so on and so forth. He caught his own name in her chatter and decided not to pay any mind, focusing instead on cornering both Eskel and Jaskier.

“We can’t let her tell this sorcerer where Ciri is,” Eskel hissed urgently at him. Jaskier was over within earshot of Triss, vaguely responding to something Ciri was saying. Geralt tried to catch his eye.

“I think Jaskier has some sort of-- countermeasure, or plan,” Geralt murmured back. “She’s too powerful for us to say no to her.”

“It’s bad enough having one mage here,” Eskel said, more or less under his breath. Geralt gave him a raised-eyebrow look. “I’m not saying I don’t like her, Geralt,” Eskel went on, rolling his eyes, “but she’s insanely dangerous.”

“I do know how that goes,” Geralt said, letting his eyebrows indicate how silly it was for Eskel to act like Geralt had never fucked a mage. A mage he liked, even. He tried again to catch Jaskier’s eye, and it worked this time. He tried to beckon him over with his eyebrows and Jaskier just winked.

“What fucking _kind_ of countermeasure,” Eskel said, frustrated.

Geralt sighed, and gathered his patience. “Sometimes,” he said, “the only thing to do with Jaskier is to wait.”

Eskel gave Geralt a long, considering look. “You trust him that much?”

“I trust that I’ll get a chance to make him explain himself before it’s too late,” Geralt said.

When Lambert saw his chance he took it. Geralt had clearly been trying to get Jaskier alone for the past hour or more, but the bard had avoided it, and had waited for Geralt’s attention to be caught up with Ciri to slip away to go to the latrine. So Lambert stalked him there and was waiting when he came out.

“Spill,” Lambert said, and Jaskier flailed and gasped. “You tell me right now why I’m not gonna rain dimeritium bombs down on that mage and take her magic talky thing away. Geralt thinks you got a plan. I don’t trust like that.”

Jaskier pressed his hand to his chest, sagging against the wall. “Fuck,” he said.

“You think I’m kidding?” Lambert demanded. “Listen, she’s fucking Eskel, so he’ll let himself be pacified by Geralt’s vague assurances, and of course Geralt believes in you because you’re fucking _him_ , but _nobody_ here is fucking _me_ so I am not going to put up with maybes in the hopes of orgasms, see?”

“I trust Yennefer,” Jaskier said, and for some reason held up his hand, the back of it facing Lambert. What, was he gonna slap him like that? Wouldn’t do much good, would it?

“And Yennefer trusts Triss, sure,” Lambert said, “which is why she’s here, but you know every time you trust at a remove that at least halves it. And anyway we trust Yennefer because she’s fucking Geralt too.” Lambert frowned, thinking that over. “Wait, is he fucking you both at the same time? How does that work?”

“He hasn’t so far,” Jaskier said, “but if you don’t know how threesomes work at your age I’m not about to be the one to explain those facts of life to you.”

“I,” Lambert said, but then incredibly enough his mouth failed him and he didn’t have anything to say to that. “I mean, that’s not the point,” he said, but Jaskier’s mouth twitched and he knew he’d lost on that one. “My point is, we don’t want any more fucking mages knowing where our fucking kid is.”

“ _Our_ ,” Jaskier said, raising his eyebrows. “Wait, she’s yours too?”

“Of fucking course she is,” Lambert said. “I’m sorry, if you don’t know how families work at your age I’m not about to be the one that explains it to you.”

Jaskier stared at him, mouth slightly open, and blinked twice. “A fair hit, sir,” he said, and gave Lambert a courtly bow. “A fair hit.”

“Well?” Lambert said. “Yennefer vouching for Merigold, and us taking that because Geralt vouches for her, isn’t going to cut it in the face of changed circumstances. That’s a threefold remove, if Merigold now wants us to trust this Vile Force guy.”

“Fourfold,” Jaskier said, “because it’s Geralt vouching for Yennefer vouching for Merigold vouching for Tissaia de Vries who’s vouching for Vilgefortz who no one has seen in person since he possibly fell into enemy hands _quite_ some time ago.” He smiled tightly. “Which is why I’ve been trying to send a message to Yennefer since this morning but since it’s a one-way communication I don’t know if she got it. But I’ve got Ciri wound up enough that she’s not going to leave Triss alone anytime soon, and I don’t think even Triss is trusting enough to actually make a megascope call to someone unknown with Ciri standing there.”

“You don’t _think_ ,” Lambert said.

Jaskier shrugged. “You have a failsafe way to stop her?” he asked. “I didn’t catch what you were going to rain on her.”

Lambert pulled one of the bombs out of his inner jacket pocket. “Dimeritium,” he said. “I mean, Witchers don’t like the stuff either, so I’m not excited to use it within our own keep, but I will if I have to.”

“Excellent,” Jaskier said. “That is a weight off my mind, Lambert.” He patted Lambert on the shoulder, with apparently sincere affection. “I like being trusted but it’s also a lot of pressure, and I’m not sure Yennefer’s listening. I _do_ trust her, but I also don’t know for certain that she’s got time or means to deal with this.”

Lambert scowled. “So how long am I gonna wait before we decide we gotta do it my way?”

“I should think it would be readily apparent,” Jaskier said. “It likely won’t be so urgent as all that, I think Ciri has the population of this keep wound around her little finger tightly enough that nobody’s going to have much spare time today. By the way, I assume you haven’t managed to dodge an invitation to the tea party?”

“I’m not a tea party guy,” Lambert said, but even as he said it he knew that was a shitty thing to say. He sighed. “I mean. I don’t have an invitation yet, but I’m probably not busy later, provided I don’t get called upon to do anything real antisocial.”

“It’s fancy dress,” Jaskier said.

Lambert rolled his eyes. “I’m sure I’ll manage,” he said. He sighed. “I’ll bring booze.”

“Young lady,” Vesemir said, and Geralt froze in chagrin; he hadn’t thought to take the old swordmaster into consideration, because he’d been holding himself apart from most of the discussions he’d dismissed as _political_ about the outside world. “What’s this about you giving away Ciri’s location to another mage?”

They were around the corner, so Geralt couldn’t see Triss’s expression. He’d followed her here, after Jaskier had disappeared into the basement with Lambert and Ciri; he’d talked Eskel out of sabotaging her, and had decided the most responsible thing was to take it upon himself to talk to her, but he hadn’t worked up the nerve yet.

“Ah,” she said, “an understandable concern. Well, I hadn’t thought of it like that until I figured out why Eskel was making that face. So, it turns out, it is possible to obfuscate the location of a megascope, so I’ve been working out how to do that. Rest assured, I won’t give away our location, even though I know this other mage is trustworthy-- there’s a very real possibility he could be spied on, and I know we can’t take any chances with Ciri.”

“Hm,” Vesemir said, neutral to skeptical. “You’re certain? I don’t want to doubt you, but you must understand our position, here.”

“I do,” Triss said.

Geralt made himself scarce before either of them came around the corner, and went to find Jaskier.

He could hear Ciri’s laugh echoing up from the basement. Lambert had been working on alchemy fundamentals with Ciri down there for several days, now, and they’d had a series of crocks fermenting along the inner wall of the kitchen, one of which had finished and needed to get distilled today, so he wouldn’t be surprised if they’d gone on to do that. He _would_ be surprised if Jaskier knew the slightest bit about it, though.

He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that Jaskier had his lute and was sitting on one of the workshop tables with it, right in the midst of playing a lurid rendition of a ballad Geralt had somehow never heard, which included something about a vampire in the refrain and was unmistakably drawn from one of Geralt’s hunts.

He stalked into the room and said, “Fiction,” into one of the pauses; he’d heard enough to recognize it was ostensibly about him but had no bearing on reality, particularly.

Jaskier whipped around to look at him. “Ha!” he said, “there you are,” and Geralt stared blankly at him because his face was impeccably made up like a high-class courtesan in the current Novigrad style, with the fashionable cupid’s-bow lips, the powdered forehead, and the pinkened cheeks, his eyebrows drawn in dark but thin with exaggerated curves and his eyes outlined in kohl that made them look bigger and set off their color. He even had a little heart-shaped beauty mark painted onto one cheek, which was a newly-fashionable affectation Geralt had only seen a couple of times and had been baffled by each time.

“Are these alchemy lessons or,” he began, and only then did he notice that Lambert, also, was made-up in the same fashion, his face powdered and his eyes drawn in, his lips outlined in a much different shape than his mouth naturally was. He might have had false eyelashes on, as well, or perhaps his were just so heavily painted as to appear so.

“We’re covering a lot of ground,” Lambert said, cocking a hip and tilting his head in challenge.

“Jaskier did all our makeup,” Ciri said, delighted. She also was painted up like a tart, with red, red lips and her eyelids shadowed and her face powdered, and Geralt couldn’t help but frown at it; her face looked like a doll’s, but she also looked like-- well, you couldn’t really tell she was a kid, anymore, except of course that she was in her usual boys’ clothes, and it wasn’t, well, he knew she was a pretty girl but seeing her made up like a courtesan was uncomfortable for reasons Geralt was absolutely not going to examine at all. He just knew he didn’t like it. “Don’t we look cute!”

If he said no, he was going to have to explain himself. He was not going to do that. “Yes,” Geralt said. “You all look very cute.” It was not convincing, but he could brazen this out, and was not going to explain himself.

“He can do yours!” Ciri said. “I want to see what you’d look like!”

Geralt eyed Lambert, looking at the way the powder-- actually, the powder sat very well over Lambert’s facial scars, and it looked-- well, it didn’t look bad. His mouth looked kind of ridiculous though, drawing on whatever shape you wanted without regard for your canvas seemed silly. “I’m not fond of the style,” he said, gesturing to his mouth. “With the-- I’d rather not get a doll mouth painted on, I don’t like that fashion.”

“It’s more a theatrical look than one suited for daily wear,” Jaskier said, still going on his lute somehow, “but that was what we were going for, it’s a fancy dress party later.” He set aside the lute and hopped down. “But I can do a different style for you, if you’re too vain to set aside your natural looks for such a cause.”

“That’s me,” Geralt said, “vain.” His _natural looks_. Hah. “For the record I just heard Triss explaining to Vesemir that she’s found out how to configure her megascope so as not to give away her location when next she uses it.”

“Ah,” Jaskier said brightly, “that is fantastic.”

“You never did tell me what your plan for dealing with this was,” Geralt said.

“Ah,” Jaskier said. “Sit down.”

Geralt contemplated his options, but sat on the bench Jaskier had been pointing to. “Well?”

Jaskier smiled, and put his hands on Geralt’s cheeks, evaluating him. “I can send Yennefer one-way messages,” he said. Then he clucked his tongue. “Such a complexion you have, I barely need powder.”

Geralt gave him a glower and a growl, and then said, “One-way messages?”

“Yes,” Jaskier said. “I don’t know how it works, don’t ask me.” He picked up a little pot and dabbed powder into Geralt’s biggest facial scar, with a surprisingly delicate hand. “Oof, this powder is almost too dark for you. Hang on, I’ll use this one.” He picked up another little pot.

“Why did I agree to this?” Geralt wondered aloud. “And Jaskier, I _do_ need to know how it works. How do you send them? Is it written or spoken?”

“Spoken,” Jaskier said. “Close your eyes.” Geralt obeyed because it was that or be blinded. Jaskier went over his scar again, then brushed lightly over his nose and chin.

“I don’t,” Geralt said, and stopped as Jaskier brushed over his mouth.

“Stop talking,” Jaskier said. “Keep your eyes closed.”

“You’re so fast at that,” Lambert said.

“Theatre, darlings,” Jaskier said. “You don’t have a lot of time for this sort of thing.” Something damp touched Geralt’s eyelid and he kept himself still by sheer effort of will.

Jaskier was drawing eye makeup onto him. He was going to have to wash his face directly, but first he was going to show Ciri that this was fine and he wasn’t judging them. It seemed important, even though he _was_ judging them and very much didn’t want Ciri to get into the habit of making herself up like a courtesan.

He really should make himself think about why that bothered him. _He’d_ never maltreated a courtesan or prostitute, particularly, but he knew a lot of people did. He didn’t like to think about what a person who combined the presentation of a Witcher and a sex worker would be treated like, out in the world.

He had to stop thinking about it because he started to get upset again. Jaskier brushed powder over his face and said “You can open your eyes now,” and Geralt blinked and looked up at him as Jaskier carefully took his jaw in hand and traced lightly over his eyebrows.

“Oh,” Jaskier said, seeming struck by his own handiwork, and Lambert was standing next to him, watching with interest. Ciri crowded in, shoving her face between their shoulders.

“Oooh, you look so pretty,” she cooed, genuinely delighted.

“I highly doubt there’s anything that could actually make _me_ look _pretty_ ,” Geralt said drily.

“Can I do your mouth?” Jaskier asked.

“No,” Geralt said. “I don’t like that fashion.”

Jaskier patted his cheek fondly. “My vain darling,” he said. “I could do a more classic look for you, if you wanted.”

A sharp pulse from his medallion made Geralt shoot to his feet. “What the shit,” Lambert said, grabbing at his and spinning around.

“That’s not the megascope,” Geralt said.

“No,” Lambert said grimly, and without further discussion, they both turned and sprinted up the stairs out of the basement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was like pulling teeth, IDK why. Well, partly because I had almost no free time to work on it and was trying to do it in little dribs and drabs, and probably partly because I was trying to do Plot and that's like, nobody's idea of a fun time, composition-wise. So it's all like, fifty different little POVs and no transitions and ugh, I don't like it, but there's nothing I can see to fix, so maybe it's okay. Sorry about the cliffhanger, the next bit winds up all tying in together and this was the place to cut it. I hope I can devote more time to the next part so I can post it soon and not leave it on this hanging edge... 
> 
> I hope you all are still hanging in there and all that. I got takeout ice cream from my favorite place, which still exists, so I'm hanging on to that little bit of pleasure amid all of this.
> 
> p.s. how the fuck is it JULY


	17. A Full Measure Of Devotion

It was a portal, and someone had just come through it, in the courtyard of Kaer Morhen near the broken flagstones. It wasn’t in the same location as the other portal, it was at the top of a half-flight of steps in poor repair, and whoever had come through was lying in a heap in the snow at the bottom. 

Geralt grabbed up one of the swords from the rack of practice blades stored just inside the door of the ruined hall that opened onto the courtyard-- it was a steel one, but it’d have to do, his own swords were of course in the main hall where he’d been working on them-- and Lambert was right behind him, doing the same. 

Lambert had a bomb in his hand as well, already-- a dimeritium bomb, which of course he did, with a mage in the keep he’d probably created a huge stockpile of them. 

The person who’d come through the portal staggered up as the portal vanished, and Geralt stopped dead, throwing out his free hand to stop Lambert. 

Yennefer looked up, unsteady on her feet, black hair and ashen face and black and white brocade dress, and her eyes crossed and she went back down to her knees, then fought her way back up out of the snow. “Where,” she said unsteadily.

“Fuck, another one you know?” Lambert said. “Who’s this one?”

Geralt realized with some shock that of course Lambert didn’t know her. “It’s Yennefer,” he said, and dropped the steel sword into the snow as he went to her. “Yennefer! What are you doing?”

“Triss,” Yennefer said, staggering a few steps closer to him-- she looked horribly injured, or drunk, or-- something was wrong. “-- not answering her megascope--”

Geralt caught her in his arms. She was wearing a coat, at least, but she wasn’t remotely dressed for the weather, and her hair streamed loose around her. She had no illusions in place, and her face was still faintly scarred. She was too physically slight to be heavy in his arms, but her legs weren’t holding her up and she was dragging at him with all her scant weight. “The portal,” he said.

“I did-- the multi-portal-- casting-- myself,” Yennefer managed, and got her arm up around his neck part of the way, her fingers curling tightly into his coat. “Fucking-- _Tissaia_ \-- where is Triss?”

The door from the main hall burst open and Eskel came out, wearing his silver sword and with the steel one in his hand. But Triss was there, directly behind him, already weaving a spell with her hands-- it looked like a cage of thorns. 

“Yennefer,” Triss said, astonished, and let go, the thorns dissolving into pale smoke around her. “What’s happening?”

“Don’t,” Yennefer said, “don’t-- Vilgefortz isn’t-- can’t know where you are.”

“I know,” Triss said. “Did he-- did he do something to you? What are you doing here?”

“She says she cast the multi-portal array herself,” Geralt said, adjusting his hold on her so she wouldn’t have to drag quite so hard on his jacket. She was shivering. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get inside, she’s not dressed for this.”

It wasn’t bitterly cold, but it wasn’t pleasant out, and the wind was whipping ice crystals up into the air. 

He calculated the risk briefly, then gathered Yennefer up into a bridal carry. He felt her try to gather herself to protest, but she was shaking more with exhaustion than cold, and she weighed nothing. Her perfume teased faintly at his nose, and he resisted the urge to breathe her in. She wasn’t here for that-- she wasn’t here for him.

“I modified my megascope to conceal my location,” Triss said to Yennefer, doing a middling job of hiding her irritated exasperation. “I’m not a complete trusting fool. We don’t know where he’s been this whole time and we can’t be sure he’s genuinely in a secure location, especially if we don’t know what his condition truly is.”

“I tried to call you to talk about it,” Yennefer said weakly, “and you wouldn’t--”

“I couldn’t answer because my megascope is currently in a configuration so that no one can trace its location,” Triss said, her tone a little sharp. “So I had no way of knowing you were trying to contact me.”

“Ah,” Geralt said, so that Yennefer wouldn’t have to.

“How did you know anyway?” Triss asked. “I assume Tissaia contacted you, but why did you assume that I’d be contacting him and that I’d be too much of an idiot to take precautions?”

Yennefer opened her mouth and closed it, and Geralt could tell from her heartbeat that she was barely conscious. She managed to draw a deeper breath, but couldn’t get words out. She wasn’t injured, but she wasn’t all right either.

The door closed behind them, its sound echoing through the quiet hall. Eskel went and laid a fire and lit it, and Geralt carefully put Yennefer down into one of the high-backed chairs near the hearth, and pulled one of the furs over her lap. 

“She’s not entirely conscious,” he said to Triss, when Yennefer still hadn’t answered her. 

“She’s an idiot,” Triss said heatedly, but went and found a cup of water, and came back and sat on a footstool next to the chair, pressing the cup into Yennefer’s hand. Geralt’s medallion buzzed lightly and Yennefer took a deeper breath, reviving slightly; Triss had just done something to help her. 

“Ah,” Yennefer said, and took a drink from the cup. “I--” she breathed in, let it out. “I, of course, Triss, I--”

“How did you form the assumption that I was going to immediately dash off and megascope him?” Triss asked, annoyed. 

“You said as much,” Yennefer said, pressing her fingers to the space between her eyebrows-- she must have a terrible headache.

Triss turned and looked at Geralt. “To you?” she asked, her expression terrible and fierce. He hadn’t known she could make an expression like that with her naturally-sweet face. 

Geralt blinked, taken aback. “No,” he said, “Yennefer and I--”

“To me,” Jaskier said, coming in from the hallway door with Ciri. “Sorry, Triss. I’m the spy. I sent her a message because I was worried about it. Please forgive me, I don’t really know you except by reputation and I was afraid.”

Ciri was clinging to the back of his jacket with one hand, and Geralt noted that while Jaskier’s eyes were still ostentatiously made up, he’d scrubbed off most of the lip color and the little heart-shaped fake beauty mark.

Even in the tense moment, Geralt stole a moment to glance over at Lambert, who had clearly entirely forgotten about his makeup and still had the incongruous face of a porcelain doll. However, he’d stashed the dimeritium bomb somewhere, and was carrying the sword he’d picked up as well as the sword Geralt had dropped. 

Triss looked at Jaskier, and sighed. “I suppose I can’t be angry,” she said, “but if you’d let me know, I’d have called Yennefer first to confer with her. I hadn’t thought she’d concern herself overmuch.” She addressed Yennefer. “You were barely involved with the Brotherhood, and I hadn’t expected you to be overly-enthused about any signs of its revival.”

“I fucking _hate_ the Brotherhood,” Yennefer said darkly. “And I don’t care about Vilgefortz, but I was the last person in contact with him before he disappeared and when I tell you something was strange about that whole business, I mean that.”

Triss frowned. “This is the first I’m hearing it,” she said. Geralt hadn’t read Jaskier’s book about the battle either, but he was vaguely aware that Vilgefortz was in some way responsible for the tactical decision to hold Sodden Field at the Elven ruin.

“Well, exactly,” Yennefer said. “I wasn’t going to speak ill of him if he was dead, but since he’s not, I’m damn well not holding my tongue. He’s turned, Triss, I’m sure of it. Fringilla got to him, if he’s been gone this long without a word.”

“Hm,” Triss said, unconvinced. But at that moment she caught sight of Lambert, and did a double-take, and looked at Jaskier, and then turned and looked right at Geralt, and suddenly burst out laughing. “Oh my word,” she said, “are you all-- did we interrupt another makeup lesson?”

“Jaskier did our makeup,” Ciri said, from where she was still clinging behind him. 

“Holy shit,” Eskel said, “Lambert, you look _adorable_.”

“I _always_ look adorable, you uncultured swine,” Lambert said, smirking, and actually, yeah, the look kind of suited him. Geralt wouldn’t have said he had a pretty face but the combination of powder and eyeliner sharpened his features into something approaching delicateness.

“This is what you get up to around here,” Yennefer said faintly, letting her head tip back against the back of the chair. She was looking at Geralt, and he met her eyes and quirked his eyebrows, glad he’d declined the more ridiculous bits of the makeup. “The look suits you too, Geralt. Why am I not surprised?”

“Since you’re here,” Jaskier said, “we’re having a tea party this evening.”

“I don’t know that I’ll be up to anything of the sort,” Yennefer said, “but I am delighted to discover that such things are apparently commonplace here.” She managed a half-smile. “I admit, that is not what I imagined when I thought of a ruined keep full of Witchers.”

“More fool you,” Jaskier said. “Witchers know how to _party_.”

Yennefer spent the day half-conscious in a bed in a dim room somewhere, fighting a terrible headache. Triss had mercy on her, and brewed her one of her lovely medicinal teas, and wove warming charms all around the room, and the others left her in peace. 

She hadn’t just run headlong into a portal as soon as the jolt of Jaskier’s worried fear at breakfast had alerted her to the issue. She’d methodically tried to contact Triss, contacted Tissaia, been condescended to, gotten her feathers ruffled, packed a small bag, and set up as much of the array as she could using external sources before she’d finally tried Triss’s megascope one last time and only then activated the array and plunged through. 

Still, it had taken more chaos than she truly had to spare, and as it was, some of the array had probably been noticeably frayed. She’d made the strongest portal to Novigrad, though, to convey the impression that Triss was there; the one to Kaer Morhen had been barely stable enough to fling herself through. 

Which was why she’d so promptly fallen down the stairs. But nobody had seen that, and the thoroughly mundane bruises on her elbow and thigh and shin would fade fast enough, once she had enough chaos back to speed them on their way.

She woke hungry late in the day, and found that a tray of food had been left for her in the adjoining room, and a note on it. She ate the food, and read the note, and was a little surprised that it was in Geralt’s handwriting. 

_Yennefer_ ,

_Should you wake in need of company, C insists I invite you to her tea party formally._

There was a little map underneath, drawn in sure enough lines, showing the layout of this end of the keep with a little dotted trail to a starred room that said _party here_. 

_Fair warning, however, you’ll probably have to get your makeup done. The only one she has spared is Vesemir._

_I hope you feel better soon._

_\-- G_

Yennefer folded the note and put it back on the tray, finished the slice of quite good bread, and looked curiously around the room. It was a large room with several alcoves, one of which held a large, sturdy bed with some shabby but well-made bed hangings. There were a lot of furs about, and various hides nailed to the walls, and skulls on shelves-- it was all rather a bit rustic for her tastes, but it seemed fitting for a place associated with Geralt. There were some preserved specimens in jars, and she investigated them with interest as she ate the cheese from the plate. Mostly bits of monsters, that wasn’t surprising, though some seemed to have multiple specimens in them-- for storage, then, not display, which was odd. Did he take them out to dissect later? Were they used in potions? That one had a lot of smaller things tucked in alongside a large specimen, and she decided against trying to identify any of them. She didn’t dare use her magical senses to divine more-- the pain was mostly gone but the inside of her head felt hollow and scraped-out. 

She was delighted to realize that the shelf laden with books was mostly full of absolutely scurrilous, trashy novels, of the least-literary kind. Most of them were clearly the type with plots involving noble knights on errantry, out of a fictitious bygone era, and there was a healthy dose of ribaldry implied by the titles of most of them.

Was this Geralt’s room, or was it the room of some poor dead comrade of his who couldn’t defend his taste in books? She skimmed through the covers, looking for something embarrassingly revealing, and was rewarded within a few minutes with one that had a very promising broken spine and a great deal of wear on the cover, showing it to have been a favorite.

Sure enough, as she sat on the fur rug on the floor by the hearth, chewing with the book in her lap, it flopped itself right open to a page that wasn’t exactly dog-eared but showed considerable signs of wear. She settled in and was rewarded immediately with an action scene. 

_\--fair voice exclaimed, and he gazed upon her in wonderment, that she would come to him thus and he yet abed. Lo now! said the damsel, and I would give thee thy reward for thy bravery. Alas, quoth the good knight, I am not worthy of reward, and have done only what my duty demanded. Nay, protested the damsel, thou hast done great deeds, even unto nearly costing thy life. My life is worth but little, said the knight, when set against thy beauty and goodliness._

_But she stopped his tongue by bestowing upon him a kiss of such surpassing sweetness, it quite took away his wits. And then she did unfasten her kirtle, and letting it drop to the ground she stood before him altogether bare, and the sight of her radiant form completely arrested him._

_But in a moment his wits returned to him, and he turned his face away, saying Nay, my lady! I am not worthy of such treatment._

_She took his hands in hers and, climbing upon the bed, pressed his wrists against the head-board, that he could not move, and such was his condition from the many wounds he had received and the exhaustion of the fighting that her delicate strength exceeded his in that moment, and he could not wrest free, and feared to try lest he injure her flawless limbs. She pressed herself to him, and he could not but yield to her, and in but a brief space after, all his thoughts of duty and self-denial had fled._

_She bade him leave his hands affixed to the headboard as she had placed them, and he could not but do as she asked. With his body thus restrained only by her words, she set about bestowing upon him his reward. And such a reward it was, fit for tribute to Melitele, a sacred offering of a maiden’s love. Despite his wounds, his body was quickly fit for the necessary performance, and with no hesitation he provided that which she most earnestly desired. She sought her own pleasure with eager actions, gripping his slim hips betwixt her soft thighs and transfixing herself upon his turgid offering, her vigorous movements causing her soft white breasts to heave with dazzling glory before his dazed eyes; in a matter of only a few moments she had brought herself to an ecstatic state._

_He clung to the headboard of the bed as hard as he sought to cling to his own composure, but all too soon was defeated; her beautiful gasping tremors soon worked upon his awareness and brought him similarly to completion. He spilled within her a most generous offering to the goddess she so revered, a full measure of devotion, his harsh breaths like unto a prayer._

_Forsooth, quoth the maiden, thou hast--_

The next page wasn’t nearly so worn; that was obviously the whole of the good part. Yennefer found herself smiling and going back to re-read the scene. Of course-- no, this was absolutely Geralt’s book, he was surely the one that had broken its spine here. Of course he’d reread that scene until the page almost fell out. It was so tame, and yet-- no, she just knew it suited him straight down to his simple-hearted core.

She left the book out on the table, open to the page. The table was piled with knives in various states of repair, and there was a stack of repaired armor on one of the chairs as well, and a basket of clothing undergoing mending or re-making over next to the fireplace. Much of it was vaguely familiar-- she’d seen that knife, recognized the leather-wrapped hilt, she’d seen that gambeson. This was Geralt’s room.

It was not the djinn that was making that squeezing feeling in her chest, under the amusement-- that was legitimate fondness, such as she’d felt for several people in her day. No, she _liked_ him, she did, even though he was an asshole and presumed a lot about their intimacy. A djinn tying their fates together would not particularly care whether she found his armor comfortably familiar or liked the way he mended his shirts. The djinn could have been responsible for how suddenly, desperately safe she had felt to be gathered in his warm, strong arms earlier today, but that was perfectly plausibly just herself, as well, after such a hard day and so much exertion. He’d smelled of clean woodsmoke and laundry soap, not at all like he did out on the road, and he’d carried her so easily and hadn’t ever touched her in any kind of presumptuous way. 

With the food gone, she pulled herself together. He did have a looking-glass-- not a large one, but next to the basin there was a small glass of decent quality for shaving. There was a comb, too, with a few white hairs caught in it. She used it to tidy her sleep-mussed hair, get it to flow nicely again; no illusions to help her meant she was just going to have to make the best of things. She had enough chaos that she could manage to use a little, but it was better to save it in case she really needed it.

She had brought a little bag, and her makeup was in it, so she washed her face and reapplied it, as boldly as if for an evening court function. She didn’t have a second dress, but she straightened the one she’d slept in. No illusions and no glamors, but she was stunning, she’d suffered for it and still had it despite the mostly-healed scars. 

Fortified and prepared, she set out to follow the map Geralt had drawn.

Jaskier plucked absently at the strings of the lute, watching the assemblage with a practiced eye. This was as merry a party as he’d attended in quite some time. Eskel and Triss had, after a time with tense body language, apparently made up, and were sitting rather close to one another, Triss occasionally forgetting herself and getting caught up in watching Eskel whenever he spoke, and Eskel’s face drifting out of its customary neutral expression into a smile more often than not. Coen had turned up, and had tamely submitted to having his makeup done-- Jaskier had been busy by then, so Lambert had done it, and he was distractingly attractive like that, with his eyes thickly outlined and a fine tracery of golden powder dusted across his cheekbones.

Ciri was sitting in Geralt’s lap, and for a wonder Geralt seemed entirely inured to it, steadying her with an absent hand as if he were used to this. Geralt was smiling for much of the time, and with his eyes still made up and his hair elaborately braided now to go with it-- Ciri had made him sit on the floor so she could braid it and he’d submitted without hesitation or complaint, even allowing her to plait bright silk ribbons in blue and green through some of it-- he looked young and carefree and happy. 

Even Vesemir looked like he was having a good time. He was a bit reserved, set apart a little, sitting in what looked like the room’s most comfortable chair, and Lambert kept pouring him more ale from the pitcher. But he was contributing frequently to the conversation, and often listened to the songs Jaskier played with his head tilted and his mouth in a soft curve, sometimes tapping his fingers out of rhythm but in the sort of way that suggested he just didn’t have much practice at discerning a rhythm.

For his part, Lambert was still heavily made-up, and was wearing a colorful garland of silk flowers on his head, and seemed to be occupying himself fairly thoroughly in ensuring that everyone had plenty to drink. He watched Jaskier’s hands a lot, and the thought crossed his mind that flirting with Lambert would probably yield quick results, but it was a reflexive calculation; he had no real interest in it. Not at the moment, anyway. Not with Geralt occasionally giving him looks over Ciri’s head, soft and amused and, occasionally, heated. 

Jaskier sang a few of his songs about Geralt, some with amended lyrics, especially the ones he’d taken a lot of poetic license with-- Geralt hadn’t known, but he’d written a few alternate verses to some of them that actually conveyed more of what had really happened, but crowds liked the flashy easy rhymes he’d mostly used. Lambert still laughed a lot, but Geralt seemed amused as well.

At one point Jaskier looked over and Geralt had deftly removed one of the ribbons from his own braids and was expertly fastening it into Ciri’s hair, face serene with concentration. Something about it caught a bit behind Jaskier’s ribs, and he flubbed the embellishment he’d been picking out on the lute and had to change modes to cover it up.

Then the door creaked open, and Yennefer poked her head through, then slipped in and closed the door behind herself. “Ah,” Jaskier said brightly, “there you are,” but he didn’t stop playing, because there was nothing worse than coming into a room full of people laughing and having the music stop and the room go silent.

Not that Yennefer of Vengeberg was going to be intimidated by a room full of people staring at her. But, Jaskier supposed, the concentrated attention of several Witchers was rather more intimidating than most crowds of this size would be. She looked very carefully neutral. She was heavily made-up, Jaskier noticed, but had no glamors or illusions in place. He wondered if she were feeling well enough to do them, or if she truly felt the company didn’t warrant them.

But then her attention caught on Geralt, who was still braiding the ribbon into Ciri’s hair-- he had a second one held carefully in his mouth, Jaskier noticed now. He’d paused, and was sitting frozen as he looked up at Yen. Yen’s expression didn’t exactly change as she looked at him, but something in her regard caught and went still.

“Yes,” Yennefer said, only a little belatedly, to Jaskier, “here I am. I was told my attendance was requested at this party, and that there’d be… tea?”

“There’s wine, if you’d rather,” Triss said, her smile a little forced, but it did seem to be an honest effort on her part. She stood up and went to retrieve another glass.

“Ah,” Yennefer said, “yes, wine would be delightful.”

Geralt patted the bench next to himself with a hopeful quirk of his eyebrows, and Yennefer came and sat where he indicated, but addressed herself to Ciri. 

“You look very distinguished tonight,” Yennefer said. “Did you do everyone’s makeup and hair?”

“No,” Ciri said, “I only did Geralt’s hair. Jaskier did our makeup.” 

Yennefer looked around, and her gaze lit on Lambert briefly. “I don’t think I’ve been introduced to everyone,” she said to Ciri.

“Ah,” Ciri said, and made to stand up. Geralt stopped her, tied off the ribbon he’d been braiding into her hair, and then patted her shoulder to release her. She bounced on her feet. “Well, you know Triss Merigold, surely.”

“I do,” Yennefer said, not unkindly. “We’ve been acquainted for seventy years.”

Ciri paused, blinking. “Oh,” she said. Then, calculating, “How long have you known Geralt?”

Yennefer shook her head. “Only about five years, I believe,” she said. “Triss knew him longer.”

“I had only met him the once, years ago,” Triss demurred. 

“But I don’t know anyone else here,” Yennefer said, “except Jaskier.”

“How long have you known _him_?” Ciri asked, something sly in it. 

Yennefer frowned slightly. “I met him the same time I met Geralt,” she said. “Admittedly, he was semiconscious at the time, but that hardly matters to the length of the acquaintance.”

“Ah yes and you tried to kill both of us,” Jaskier pointed out, “so that was fairly equal as well.”

Yennefer laughed. “I tried to _have_ him killed,” she said, “that’s much less personal. You, I brandished the knife myself.”

“Fair point,” Jaskier said. His fingers automatically filled in the introductory bars of one of the songs he had written about Yennefer and she grinned, recognizing them.

“You never have led a dull life, not even for a moment,” Triss said to Yennefer.

“Well,” Yennefer said, “while that’s not entirely true, it _is_ true that I prefer not to be bored.” She gestured. “So, my dear lady Cirilla, won’t you introduce me to these doughty gentlemen?”

“Oh,” Ciri said, “of course.” She gestured with a formal courtesy to Vesemir. “This is Master Vesemir, who has been an instructor of swordsmanship here at Kaer Morhen for approximately a hundred and ninety years.”

Vesemir nodded solemnly. “And you’re the mage Yennefer of Vengeberg,” he said, “formerly the advisor to the court at Aedirn.”

“I am,” Yennefer said. 

Ciri gestured next to Eskel. “And this is Eskel of the School of the Wolf,” she said, “who was trained in the same cohort as Geralt.”

Eskel nodded politely, as did Yennefer.

Coen was sitting next to Eskel, so she introduced him next. “Coen, of the School of the Griffin,” she said, “who has come for solace after tragedy.”

“Oh my,” Yennefer said. “My condolences.”

Coen smiled, a taut sad little smile-- Jaskier wondered what the full story was, and resolved that he’d have to write something poignant and artsy about whatever it was-- and made a courteous, self-effacing sort of little gesture. 

“And this,” Ciri said, turning, “is Lambert.”

“I don’t have anything special about me,” Lambert drawled.

“I’d be a fool to take you at your word on that,” Yennefer said, and Jaskier could read caution in the arch of her eyebrows; she wasn’t being unfriendly. But Lambert narrowed his eyes at her, and Jaskier rather thought the Witcher was on-edge expecting someone to make fun of his makeup or flower crown and the fact that no one had was only making him edgier. 

(Eskel had gently turned down makeup but had accepted a flower crown with what looked like practiced ease. Jaskier idly wondered what the dynamic around here had been like before Ciri, because it wasn’t hard to see that it had made things much easier to have her to focus on.)

“Lambert is teaching me alchemy,” Ciri said, slightly wounded, “and he likes me because me being here means he’s not the baby anymore.”

Yennefer nodded slightly, turning to consider Lambert again. “I see,” she said. “There’s no other reason he would be considered not a baby, of course.”

That amused Ciri, but Jaskier could see it wasn’t the tack to take with Lambert, who also had somewhat bristled at being called a _doughty gentleman_ , though Jaskier couldn’t tell if his objection was that he wasn’t sure what the word _doughty_ meant, or whether he didn’t consider himself gentle, or a man-- any of them were possible, and all likely, and possibly it was all three of them. (Jaskier knew Geralt objected to being called a man, sometimes, and had on a couple of occasions been obstreperously insistent that he was not human.) He was still getting to know Lambert, but much of him was an open book, especially compared to Geralt-- not that Geralt was so deep or unknowable, but where Geralt seldom spoke, Lambert seldom shut up, and it gave an observer more to work with.

Jaskier launched into a new composition he’d been idly noodling about with in his head that morning, a decidedly silly thing set to a tune he had composed ages ago for use in extemporanea like this. It was just a quick doodle of a song with a stanza apiece to describe the surviving Wolf witchers, and he started with Lambert, though of course the first one he’d composed had been for Eskel because he couldn’t resist the juxtaposition of the fierce face and kind heart. 

But Lambert’s verse was about sharp wit, blunt truth, sly cunning, and merciless dedication to vengeance, which were all things about himself that Lambert seemed to be aware of and at least resigned to, if not actively proud of. 

It worked; Lambert’s expression went blank, then reluctantly pleased, and Triss clapped in delight. “I’ve verses for everyone but that one’s the first one I finished,” Jaskier said. He’d deploy the others next time he needed a distraction. 

Properly, the structure of the song would likely put Geralt first, if he ever performed it anywhere else, but it wasn’t likely to be a crowd favorite. He’d do that one for the seminar at the academy, those kids were into the Witcher stories. He’d thought to put Lambert last, but maybe Vesemir should go last, as the most ancient; his verse was structured a little differently. At any rate, it didn’t matter now. Oh, also, he didn’t have one yet for Coen, as the man had said perhaps two sentences all together, but he was going to worry about that later; for the moment he had the plausible excuse that it was just the Wolf witchers. Coen could get the sad artsy piece and be contented with that. 

“You need to add a bit about how good he looks in eyeliner,” Geralt said. 

“Only if your verse mentions it too,” Lambert shot back, defensive. 

Geralt shook his head. “I don’t think it suits me as well as it does you.”

“Mm, the contrast is a bit much, with your coloring,” Jaskier said, tilting his head. “It does suit Lambert more, you’re right. Geralt, we could try it in brown next time, or at least a warm black.”

“Might help,” Geralt said. “Won’t do to expend too much effort on it, though, Jaskier-- I never got the hang of putting it on myself. It’s parties only for me, I’m afraid.”

Was Geralt flirting with Lambert? No, Jaskier decided; his earlier protestation that Lambert was like a brother had been too awkward to be dishonest. He did wonder whether Lambert returned the sentiment. 

Yennefer had turned back to Ciri, and was asking her about her studies. Clearly flattered by the attention, Ciri was detailing who was teaching her what. Satisfied that he’d salvaged the atmosphere, Jaskier addressed himself to Vesemir, and set about playing him several classical compositions the old Witcher had mentioned earlier. 

The rest of the evening passed agreeably, and no one got too intoxicated. At length Geralt pointed out that it was getting on toward time for Ciri to go to bed, and Yennefer mentioned that she had a terrible headache, and Triss exclaimed in dismay that she had an excellent headache remedy, and Ciri was excited because Triss had made up a guest-bed for her to sleep in Triss’s suite of rooms because Yennefer was temporarily stashed in Ciri’s bedroom and all of this was delightful to Ciri.

At any rate, it was rather a lot of fuss and bother for a little while. Triss had produced a tonic against headache, and administered it to Yennefer, who was now looking wan and downcast. Rather than adding to the chaos surrounding Ciri’s arrangements for bed and the rest of the party breaking up, Jaskier threw himself eagerly into the task of taking charge of Yennefer and seeing her safely back to Geralt’s room. 

Yennefer gave him an amused look that made it plain she wasn’t nearly so indisposed as she was pretending. Geralt was absorbed enough in Ciri not to notice. Jaskier made elaborate farewells to everyone, and they took their leave gracefully enough.

The door shut behind them, and Jaskier gave her a look, deciding whether she actually wanted him to keep his solicitous hold of her arm. She grinned at him, and leaned over and kissed his cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that cliffhanger dangled so long. Not a lot of time to work on stuff in the summers even in a normal summer, and this ain't that. But it's all good, I and mine are surviving. 
> 
> I've been discussing, on Tumblr, the bit in chapter... fourteen? where Geralt's got all these tawdry novels with salacious descriptions of bosoms on his bookshelf, and debating what should actually be in them, and so the fruits of some of that discussion are here but of course there's more to discuss. Anyway I made a master post of the Discussions of Geralt's Porn and am linking to it from here to encourage you to see how much went into the tiny bit that I actually included in this chapter, LOL. [Geralt's Formative Porn Masterpost](https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/623624165714477056/geralts-formative-porn-masterpost).
> 
> OH MY GOSH AND one MORE thing that I forgot to link to last time I updated:  
> Rion Sanura wrote and recorded an INCREDIBLE version of Jaskier's risque song that he performs at the session in Oxenfurt and again in Kaer Morhen, with the hand-job in the third verse, and it is on Bandcamp, and please go listen to it here:   
> [Love, Stay Thy Hand](https://rionsanura.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-the-path) (as part of a three-song Witcher-inspired works mini-album) It's incredible and I have had it stuck in my head intermittently for the extremely long time since it was first put up there and I am ashamed not to have linked to it before now but my disorganization knows no bounds.


	18. To Completion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just... a lot of sex, to round out this story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains a whole bunch of sex acts, all consensual.  
> Contains references to porn that may contain less-consensual acts, in fantasy.  
> There is no humiliation or even embarrassment squick; Geralt blushes but that's as far as it goes.  
> Yennefer reads Geralt's mind briefly, which isn't really consensual but he doesn't notice; it is not explored further in this story but believe me if I write more in this timeline it will be once he catches on.  
> Yennefer also has enchanted a dildo so she can feel with it, but she's still identifying as a woman; there's no particular gender play in it, she just has a cock for part of this, because she wants to and the others like it. I just thought I should point it out in case that rubs up on anyone's issues, rather than just flinging it out there without worrying.  
> See end notes for more specific TWs.

Yennefer let Jaskier take her arm, and he walked sedately with her until they were nearly to Geralt’s door.

They spoke at the same time. “Did you bring it?” Jaskier asked, just as Yennefer said, “Is this Geralt’s room?”

“It is,” Jaskier said, “why?” and opened the door.

Yennefer looked amused, and closed the door behind her. “I _did_ bring it,” she said, “if you mean the--”

“I need to make the first-hand comparison,” Jaskier said. “Of. You know.”

“Cocks,” Yennefer said, proving herself the worthiest of conversation partners. “I don’t know, are you in any condition--”

“I _wondered_ if you were watching,” Jaskier said, nearly purring in his smugness about this revelation. Somehow knowing someone else had witnessed the hottest sex of his life to date made it even better.

“Of course I was watching,” she said. “I thought you insane this morning, when you climbed up there. Are you in any fit state to make the comparison, tonight?”

Jaskier squirmed. He’d been in worse condition, before in his life, but he did rather feel like-- well, his ass was sore. “I mean,” he said, “yes, just, not with _that_ particular bit of me.”

“Hmph,” Yennefer said. “Foolhardy.”

“I didn’t know you were coming,” Jaskier pointed out, nettled. He set his lute down by the pile of swords in the corner, and Yennefer walked over to the table.

“That’s a separate issue,” she said.

“It’s my asshole,” Jaskier said, “I can get it wrecked if I want to.” He suddenly remembered a detail of the previous night, and said, “Ah, if it would not overtax you, I highly recommend you put a silencing charm over this door so nobody can hear us from the outside. Witchers spy on each other all the time and while I genuinely enjoy being the subject of salacious gossip, I don’t expect you do.”

“I don’t,” she said, and frowned, then made a gesture at the door.

“Excellent,” he said.

She took a deep breath, visibly recovering, and managed a grin at him, and then gestured at the bookshelf. “Did you notice, by the way, what’s on these shelves?”

“Books,” Jaskier said, frowning.

She lit several of the lamps in the room with a little hand-spell-- much more glittery and subtle-looking than the one Geralt used for the purpose-- and gestured broadly at the bookshelf. “What kind of books,” she said.

Jaskier bent. “ _Fauna of the Northern Realms, Volume 1_ ,” he read.

“Not those,” Yennefer said, and gestured further down the shelf.

To be an ass, Jaskier said, “ _Fauna of the Northern Realms, Volume 2._ ”

Yennefer rolled her eyes, and bent and read, “ _The King’s Daughter’s Honor. A Journey To The Wilds. The Duke’s Secret. Flowers For The Countess. A Courtesan’s Education. Being An Account Of The Loves Of Meredia Of Glendar’s Cove_.” She straightened up. “They’re all trashy novels, Jaskier, don’t look so innocent.”

“That is fantastic,” Jaskier said, bending to look. He hadn’t actually noticed them before.

“See how worn the spines are,” Yennefer said. “You can tell where the sex scenes are, by the wear. If you pull one out, it’ll fall open--”

She grabbed one and pulled it out, and let it fall open in her hand, gently rearranging the pages so that it would lie flat. She skimmed her finger down the page. “Oh, hmm, this is-- well, predictable, but juicy.”

“How so?” Jaskier asked, craning his neck to look over her shoulder.

Yennefer let her finger rest about halfway down the page, and read, “ _So intoxicating was the aroma he could not but bury his face betwixt her supple, ivory thighs, and there passed an agreeable interval, as above him she gasped and sighed._ ”

“Oh wow,” Jaskier said. “That’s-- well, to the point.”

“It is,” Yennefer said. She looked around, and went over to the table. “The first one I picked up was fantastic. Incredibly conventional, I don’t know why I thought there’d be anything different.”

Jaskier came and looked at it, having to squint a little in the dimness until she lit him another lamp.

“ _With his body thus restrained only by her words,_ ” Jaskier read, and muttered a few more of the words to himself as he read. “ _A most generous offering. A full measure of devotion_. Well, my my. That seems--”

“Adorable,” Yennefer said, “yes.” She turned to contemplate the shelf again. “There’s got to be something juicier here, some insight we didn’t already have into the recesses of his little mind.”

“These can’t all be his books,” Jaskier said.

“Why not?” Yennefer asked. “He’s a hundred years old and he’s had a lot of boring, cold winters here. Somebody’s gotten restrained by more than words, here. Something more interesting than having his face sat on.” She pulled out another volume, and let it fall open in her hand. Jaskier waited, amused. “Bah,” she said, “this is a description of some knight’s armor.” She closed it, looked at the spine, and then gently encouraged it to fall open in another worn spot.

Jaskier leaned in to look, and Yennefer made a noise of triumph. Her eyes were sharper than his, in this light, and she’d read half the page already. “What is it?”

“Gangbang,” Yennefer said. “Oh! And it’s all men. Fantastic.”

“Wait, really?” Jaskier asked, peering in closer.

“ _His strength failed him, under the onslaught of his captors’ passion, and with it his resolve,”_ Yennefer intoned. _“For eventually under the workings of their attentions his traitor body fell victim to pleasure, and he did welcome their intrusions--”_

“Holy _shit_ ,” Jaskier said, “that’s _filthy_.”

The door opened, and Geralt came in and paused. “Why’ve you got so many lamps-- ah fuck,” he said, and pushed the door shut behind himself.

 _“Passion overcame him,”_ Yennefer continued, struggling not to laugh, _“and in its throes he cried out for mercy, but there was none, and they continued their relentless assault, one after another after another, slaking their base lusts--”_

“That one’s not my book,” Geralt said.

“I just picked one at random and opened it to where the spine showed the most wear,” Yennefer said, delighted. “It’s all right, Geralt, don’t be ashamed. If you want us to we can do this one, do you want us to gang-bang you? I’m just recovered enough for illusion magic, we can make it happen.”

“No,” Geralt said, blushing, “that’s not-- I mean it, that one’s not my book.”

“You recognize it, though,” Jaskier pointed out. Yennefer had hardly read any of it, surely not enough to know what was going on in the scene. “I mean, the most-worn page was a description of armor, I suppose that’s not surprising.”

“I mean,” Geralt said, “I’ve read every book in here, the winters are pretty boring, but--”

“So which one _is_ your favorite?” Yennefer asked keenly, setting the book down.

“Let’s-- not,” Geralt said. “Not-- I’m not--”

“We can come back to this,” Jaskier said, because he had a couple of decades of experience at handling Geralt and knew this wasn’t the way to do it. You had to bring up an idea and let him think about it and then come to you with it. This was too much like an ambush, and he’d react on instinct and his instincts were almost always to close up and flee. “My first order of business is that I need to be the impartial judge of whether your cock or Yen’s is bigger. Can we arrange that?”

Geralt laughed, still slightly uncomfortable but a great deal better than his hesitation of a moment ago. “You don’t waste time,” he said. He went over and re-laid a fire over the coals of the old one, though it wasn’t as cold in here as it ought to have been-- Jaskier suspected magic had some hand in that.

“There isn’t time to waste,” Jaskier said.

Geralt re-lit the fire with a hand sign and turned, still on his knees, to look up at them; Jaskier had crowded close to him, but Yennefer was still perusing the bookshelf. Geralt smiled crookedly at Jaskier, but his eyes were tight, uncertain, and he looked past him to Yennefer.

“That isn’t what you came here to do,” he said to her.

She looked up, mildly surprised. “Geralt,” she said. “After that megascope call, if you can still entertain the slightest delusion that we wouldn’t want to include you in something like this, then you’re entirely beyond reasoning with.”

Yennefer hadn’t had cause to spend a lot of time reading Geralt’s mind, before now. He wasn’t exactly a closed book, and it was simple enough to guess the broad thrust of his understanding of the world.

At the moment, however, even with her powers still a bit sore as they regenerated from overdoing it this morning, she couldn’t resist. She’d guessed right; he thought she was still angry with him, and even after all their hard work on that megascope call, he still had a grim, sinking certainty that neither of them particularly cared whether he involved himself in their sex lives. She was astonished to see that he’d considered asking to stay in Triss’s rooms too-- no matter how clearly she figured she had him sussed, he was capable of being even more idiotic than she’d ever guessed he could.

And he was trying to be noble, but he was also trying to keep from getting hurt. Still on his knees on the rug by the fire-- it was a bear skin, she noted absently-- he looked hesitantly up at her, eyes wary and flat with eyeshine in the uneven light, and its dramatic effect was only intensified by the fact that he was still wearing heavy eye makeup.

“Geralt,” Jaskier said, sounding moderately scandalized.

Yennefer walked over to Geralt, noting how his wariness slid simultaneously into worry and excitement as she got closer, and reached down to put her hand against the side of his face. He was pretty, on his knees-- something about the breadth of his shoulders and the angle of his neck as he looked up at her was incredibly appealing.

“I didn’t come here just to do this, no,” she said, “but I came prepared to, once I’d addressed the immediate concern.” She cradled his jaw in her hand, feeling his pulse, slow-- his pulse didn’t quicken the same as a normal person’s, but it beat harder, perceptibly, and it was picking up, now. She glanced over at Jaskier, who had obligingly faded out of the way, and smiled. “What shall we do with him? Do you think he’ll show us a good time?”

“I have a lot of ideas,” Jaskier said, stepping closer and putting his hand onto her shoulder.

Geralt’s wariness had fuzzed out into interest, but there was still a lot of trepidation there. Oh, and he was keenly aware that he was more or less cornered against the fireplace, as if he thought they might attack him; he’d calculated how he’d have to move to get away without hurting either of them, though somewhat absently.

He also was trying not to smell her. She knew he liked her perfume, he’d commented on it before. She had reapplied it along with her makeup, so she must smell rather strongly of it now, to his nose, and he was reacting to it. Good.

“Jaskier,” she said, “be a darling-- I have a satchel, in the little bedroom there, I think I left it hanging on the peg by the door-- could you fetch it for me?”

“I’d be delighted,” Jaskier said.

Geralt looked up at her, pupils halfway to round in the dim light, wary and unwilling to accept that this might work out all right for him, even now. She had one hand cradling his jaw, and used the other to push a few stray strands of hair out of his face.

“Geralt,” she said softly. “You already passed the test. I didn’t come here to see you but I didn’t come here _not_ to see you.”

He was _afraid_. He was afraid because-- he was afraid because he wanted, and she couldn’t really tease out any more there through the thickness of it, but it wasn’t hard to guess that this was not a man who was used to getting what he wanted, ever.

Jaskier was back, holding her satchel, standing a bit behind her and to the side where he could look at Geralt. He was standing on her other side, now, between her and the wall, and Geralt had a clearer path to the door; she didn’t know if Jaskier had noticed that they’d cornered him before, but Geralt certainly noticed the different arrangement and was a bit less nervous about it.

“Jaskier, darling,” she said, “help me out of this dress, won’t you?”

He slung the satchel over his shoulder to free his hands, and set practiced hands at the fastener at the back of her neck. “Are we just keeping him down there?” he asked, tilting his head toward where Geralt was kneeling motionless, watching keenly.

“He looks so pretty there,” Yennefer said, running her finger along the edge of his hairline, touching one of the ribbons, tracing his eyebrow gently so as not to smear the pigment brushed into it. She let go of his face so she could pull her arms out of her sleeves, and then stepped out of the dress as Jaskier finished with the fasteners in back.

Normally she’d be wearing something much more elaborate for something like this; she was only wearing moderately fancy lingerie, plain weave not brocade, though good-quality silk tailored to her, of course. But she knew she didn’t have to be wearing anything particularly nice, for this audience.

She spared just enough attention to note that Jaskier lay the dress neatly over the back of a chair; he hadn’t been raised in a barn. No, she’d seen the house he’d been raised in. He didn’t treat his own things all that nicely most of the time, but he did know how.

Geralt settled back on his heels a little, watching her, less wary and more interested. He was sternly telling himself not to be too obvious about smelling her. He also was noticing that his medallion was reacting to something, and he’d rationalized that it was the warming charms Triss had put up.

Probably, it was her reading his mind, though, and it was good to know more about how his medallion worked. She hadn’t bothered with this very much before-- a few times, most notably when she’d figured out the bullshit about the djinn wish. She’d have to be sparing, with this.

She turned her head slightly, looking at Jaskier. “You can keep going,” she said. He grinned, and set to unfastening her brassiere, because of course he knew how those worked as well.

She didn’t have to dip into Geralt’s mind to know what he was thinking, as his eyes went straight to her bared breasts and stayed there.

Jaskier put his hands to the waistband of her underdrawers, and caressed the skin there gently, questioningly. “Yes, keep going,” she said. “And give me the satchel.”

He slid the shoulder strap off and handed it to her, and then he knelt behind her to work her underwear down and off her body, leaving her in her socks and shoes and nothing else. She’d only partway prepared for the weather; her boots were more fashionable than warm, and her socks were silk and only to her knees.

She drew the replica cock and its harness out of the satchel, then handed it back to Jaskier, who kissed her hip lightly and stood up to take the bag and set it aside along with her underwear. She stepped into the harness and got it settled, and Jaskier helped her with one of the buckles.

Geralt wasn’t sure which part to stare at, her breasts or her cock, so he alternated, looking gratifyingly ravenous. She rather thought he liked the shoes, too, but she wasn’t going to leave them on indefinitely; she wasn’t the kind of lady who fucked with her shoes on, in general practice.

“Have you any skill at cocksucking?” she asked.

“Some,” he said, and his voice came out so hoarse as to be nearly unintelligible.

She bit her lip and looked at him. “I’m going to cast a small enchantment,” she said, “which will affect me, mostly, so don’t be alarmed.”

He looked up at her eyes, collecting himself a little, questioning, and she smiled at him. “It’s so I can feel properly with this,” she said, indicating the cock.

His eyes went a little glazed, and his gaze snapped down. “You can do that?” Jaskier said. “Shit, that’s hot.”

“It is,” she said, and gritted her teeth and reactivated the spell. It was already there, but she knew the effort to turn it back on would be enough for Geralt to notice it, and sure enough she felt him notice and control his reaction. Under the cover of that, she scanned his mind, but mostly it was just full of blinding arousal, which was what she’d been hoping for.

“Please,” Jaskier said quietly, “let me know if I can be of any assistance in this process,” and she grinned at him, and slid one hand into Geralt’s hair and twined the other around Jaskier’s hip, pulling him close in behind her as Geralt leaned forward and took her cock in his mouth. It felt-- not really at all like receiving oral sex upon her usual genitals really, it was rather intensely warm and wet and she sucked in her breath in surprise at how good it felt.

He was pretty good at it, and Jaskier very helpfully caressed her body, her hips and her sides and her breasts, and held some of her weight as she went weak in the knees under Geralt’s determined ministrations. He took her down his throat, eyes rolling back at the pleasure of it; he worked at her with one hand, and wrapped the other securely around her thigh.

It took no time for her to forget about the lingering scraped-out feeling of her magic regenerating; it all washed out into pleasure, bright and sweet and mounting. She gave herself over to it, lost herself in it for a little bit, and in conclusion decided that yes, the spell she’d designed for the dildo worked exactly as it needed to.

She tugged at Geralt’s hair. “You’re wearing too much clothing,” she said, and managed to get him to pull off.

It was good Jaskier was hanging onto her. Her knees had largely given out and she was more or less limp in his grasp. “You too,” she said to him, and extricated herself to sit in one of the chairs by the fire. “You should undress each other. I came here to watch you two make out.”

Jaskier laughed, and dropped down to his knees on the bearskin to take Geralt by the jaw and kiss him with an urgent passion. “Yes,” she said, and while she was sitting, she pulled off her shoes and socks and set them aside.

Jaskier made much faster headway with Geralt’s clothes than vice-versa. She didn’t want to distract either of them so she only brushed lightly against Geralt’s mind-- she could get a pretty easy read on Jaskier through the ring and all he was thinking about was how turned-on he was. Geralt was in a similar state. Good.

Jaskier manhandled Geralt out of his clothes in a manner that wouldn’t have worked if Geralt was in any way coherent or unenthusiastic about it, but mostly Geralt had gone dazed and compliant and let Jaskier put him anywhere he wanted. He was more concerned with kissing Jaskier than doing anything else, and seemed pleasure-drunk on it, breathing hard and shivering a little whenever Jaskier’s skin touched his. It was down to Jaskier to get his own coat off as well, and he only bothered stripping to his shirt-sleeves before setting intently to work and taking off every stitch of clothing on Geralt.

At length Yennefer slipped out of the chair and gently disentangled Geralt’s face from Jaskier, and set about removing Jaskier’s clothing herself, since Geralt was being unhelpfully clingy and Jaskier was too distracted.

Geralt reattached himself to Jaskier as she worked, plastering himself across the revealed expanses of the bard’s skin like he was starved for it. He wasn’t putting on any kind of show, wasn’t calculating anything, he just seemed desperate for contact. She laughed and dumped Jaskier out of his trousers, rolling him on his back across the rug, and Geralt seized him and pulled him up into his grasp, skin on skin and big battered hands spread out across his hip, his back. Yennefer strayed too close and Geralt grabbed her too, kissing her mouth. Jaskier’s mouth found its way to her breast, and she moaned and laughed.

“Ah,” Jaskier said, grabbing her cock, “ah, the comparison-- here, let me look,” and in a moment she and Geralt were both lying on the rug and Jaskier had a hand on each of their hips, straddling one apiece of their legs, and then he had a hand on each of their cocks.

“See,” Yennefer said to Geralt, “it’s the same size.”

“It’s much larger,” he rumbled. “Look at that.”

Jaskier leaned in, looking smug and delighted. He licked the tip of Yennefer’s, which made her twitch, then turned his head and put his mouth on the tip of Geralt’s. “Same size,” he said. “Exactly the same.”

“No,” Geralt insisted.

“It’s a matter of scale, my dear,” Jaskier said. “Your body is larger, so it looks more proportional, and Yennefer’s body is tiny so it looks huge, but they’re actually the same size. Look.” He made them roll a little more toward each other, so he could hold both cocks in one hand, and rub them against one another, and Yennefer moaned because she hadn’t realized that would feel like that-- his cock was hot, and taut and smooth like fine silk, and wet with Jaskier’s spit. Geralt made a strangled noise, and Jaskier laughed in sheer joy and went to work on both of them with his hands and his mouth.

“Fuck,” Yennefer said, with almost the last of her coherence, “I should’ve designed this spell ages ago, I had no idea--” She shuddered into an orgasm, a pretty good one. She hadn’t designed any mechanism for that, but Jaskier swallowed it down anyway.

“Mmhh,” Jaskier said, “it fucking _tastes_ real, this is amazing.”

Geralt let out a heartfelt groan. “I’m-- fuck, I’m close,” he said breathlessly.

“Should I stop?” Jaskier asked, not stopping.

“He can go like five times,” Yennefer said, “I think you’re good. Geralt, next I’m going to fuck you.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Geralt said fervently, “ah, _fuck_ ,” and came all over all three of them.

“Yes,” Yennefer said. Her goal had been to crack Geralt open and reveal all his juicy bits and she was going to succeed. “Yes, oh fuck.” She was coming again, too, and Jaskier, his face attractively smeared with Geralt’s spend as he laughed, gentled her through it. “Come here,” she said, and pulled Jaskier up so that Geralt was cradled between them, looking vulnerable and soft and curled in on himself. Jaskier kissed Geralt’s neck and face, and Yennefer leaned in and gently licked away one of the attractive smears of Geralt’s spend streaking Jaskier’s cheek, letting her hair fall in Geralt’s face as she did so. The position put her breasts mostly in his face as well, and he nuzzled dazedly at them.

“Yen,” Geralt said, achingly tender, and she caressed him.

“My dear,” she said, “I’ve got you-- _we’ve_ got you. I’m going to fuck you but I’m going to do it sweet, I don’t want to hurt you.” She petted Jaskier’s face, and then looked down at Geralt, smoothing the loose bits of his inexpertly-braided hair back away from his forehead. “Can you take us both, do you think?”

Geralt made a fervent little noise and shivered a bit. “That doesn’t sound like a no,” she said. “But I meant one at a time, darling, do you think you can take us one at a time?”

“Yes,” Geralt said, gazing up at her in what looked like pure adoration. It was a good look and it was really working for her.

“Who should go first?” she asked him. Orgasms were useful for focusing one’s magical energy, so she put her hand out and easily summoned the vial of the good lubricant that she kept in that satchel, with nary a hint of pain or overexertion.

Jaskier held his hand out, and she gave him the vial. “Oh, this is nice stuff,” he said, in the kind of conversational tone one would expect in some other context, like shopping. She gave him a look, amused, but he’d already moved on and was kissing the back of Geralt’s shoulder and skillfully teasing him open.

“Fuck,” Geralt murmured, dazed.

“Mm, you’ve got bigger hands than I do,” Yennefer said to Jaskier, admiring the look of the work he was doing, and the beautiful line of Geralt’s glorious thigh-- he had _such_ shapely thighs, lithe and powerful. Geralt made a soft, broken little noise and tipped his head back, and Yennefer had to press herself against him and caress him, feel his cock hardening against her thigh, feel how soft his skin was between the scars-- that always surprised her, the way that felt.

She kissed him, sweetly but hungrily, and he opened for her. He was so beautifully submissive sometimes, and if you just let him do his Big Strong Growly Man act that he seemed to think everyone wanted, you missed out on all of that.

“Beautiful,” she murmured. “Will you let us have whatever we want?”

“Yes,” Geralt said, thin and desperate. “Fuck. Fuck me.”

Yennefer looked over his shoulder at Jaskier, who was so turned-on he’d lost some of his self-possession and was distant-eyed and glazed as he fucked Geralt with his fingers. Jaskier blinked, noticing her regard, and said, “Oh, ladies first, I insist.”

The way the enchantment on the dildo worked, it just let Yennefer feel things with it, it didn’t actually change her arousal patterns to be more like the men's she'd known, or anything like that. She hadn’t given it any mechanism to ejaculate, either. And all of that was just as well, because being on the giving end of penetrative sex was so intense a sensation that she came twice just from working her way into Geralt’s body, and a third time before she could even compose herself to actually give him anything.

“How do you do this,” she said, slightly embarrassed, with her face pressed to Geralt’s shoulder. It had been easy, before, doing it to Jaskier-- well, and she’d done the same thing to various lovers before that, over the years. The enchantment had been a fantastic idea but also sort of a mistake.

Fortunately, as she’d observed before, Geralt was the kind of person who really got off on his lovers’ pleasure, so the fact that she was clearly really enjoying herself seemed to be going a long way toward making up for the fact that she wasn’t exactly showing him the best time of his life.

Yet.

Jaskier leaned over the top of Geralt’s shoulder and kissed the top of her head. Geralt’s arms were mostly around her, but he seemed to have lost track of a lot of his body, and was mostly letting himself be wherever Jaskier put him. Jaskier was watching the proceeds with avid interest and his usual good humor. “Just keep doing what you’re doing,” he said, amused. In a moment, he added, “You didn’t have that enchantment on that thing when you fucked me with it.”

“No,” she admitted, but she had enough control now over herself that she could begin to move.

“Fuck,” Geralt said, sounding dazed.

“You look like you took one of your potions, love,” Jaskier observed, nuzzling at the edge of his jaw. “Like you can feel everything.”

“Feels that way,” Geralt managed. “Fuck.”

“Been a while since anyone fucked you?” Jaskier asked.

“No,” Geralt said, and managed a rueful laugh. _That_ was interesting and she would have to pursue it, but not now. “But-- fuck, Yen, I missed you.” He breathed, and-- Yennefer could feel him breathing, could feel everything about his body, could feel his heartbeat, because she was inside him, and it was so strange. Never in her life had she mistaken sexual intimacy for emotional intimacy-- not really, anyway, she’d already known better as a teenager that it was only fun to pretend-- but maybe this was why men were so stupid, because being inside a person was very different from having a person be inside you, and it was a lot to keep track of. “And both of you-- here,” Geralt went on, with an effort. “I, it’s good. I-- it’s good.”

She had to kiss him, then, for being so inarticulate, and also so adorable. “My dear,” she murmured, “my sweet.” It wasn’t usually her style, to be so soppy, but she was so drunk on pleasure she couldn’t summon any greater wit.

Jaskier was gripping Geralt’s leg, and now pulled his thigh up, giving Yennefer a deeper angle into him. Geralt made a strangled almost-whimper, tipping his head back against Jaskier’s shoulder, and Jaskier’s intent expression drove Yennefer into more forceful motion. “Yes,” he said, to her, and his face was so close to hers, like they were conspiring, “like that, try to push-- up a bit, yes, just like--” Geralt let his breath out and gasped it back in, raggedly, and Jaskier grinned, dazed and sharp, and bit his shoulder, “yes just like that, oh isn’t that good? Aren’t you so clever. Geralt, she’s going to take such good care of you. You’ve been so good. Just take it, yes, like that, let her-- just like that. Oh, so good. You’ve been so good, you deserve to be taken care of like this.”

Geralt’s face, and his body, were moving beyond his control, tensing up and letting go and trembling, breathing hard, a vague notion of struggling or resisting or pushing back here giving way to lax submission there, and there was not a scrap of coordination or composure anywhere in the lot. Under Jaskier’s ministrations and caresses and repositionings, Geralt let himself go, thrillingly, and Yennefer took him, thoroughly, and Jaskier petted and praised and encouraged both of them.

Geralt’s orgasm built slowly and powerfully and when he finally tipped over the edge Yennefer followed him in a complete state of overwhelm; she’d never expected it felt like this from the inside, but he was all shivers and tremors and his heart thumped and his breathing went stuttery and it was incredible, she could feel all of it, and it wasn’t just her physical position, it was also that he was completely abandoned to her. He was holding nothing back, he was entirely open to her, and it was such a gift to know that she could do literally, absolutely anything to him, anything at all-- it felt like an extravagant gift to herself that she was choosing to give him only pleasure, and to take nothing from him but her own pleasure.

She didn’t need anything else from him, and she could afford it. It felt good.

Jaskier put his hand on her hip, and murmured, “Stop. Hold still. Gentle. Good, there.”

Geralt was breathing hard, gone mostly limp, and she pulled his head against her breast, cradling him there. “That was maybe the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” Jaskier murmured, and caressed her breast-- ah, drawing his fingers through the spatters of Geralt’s spend across her torso. He’d come on her twice now. She opened her mouth, and Jaskier put his fingers in and she sucked them off, smugly contemplative.

“I think he needs a moment,” Jaskier said, kissing Geralt’s neck. Geralt’s eyes had rolled shut and he was breathing hard, but just breathing, lying limp in their grasp and clearly drifting. Jaskier stroked his sweaty hair out of his face and kissed his cheek, his jaw, and Geralt rolled his head up a bit to give Jaskier his throat, sweetly and without hesitation, eyes fluttering half-open and then closing again.

Yennefer hadn’t enchanted the dildo in such a way that it would go soft, so it was still in him. Jaskier lifted his head to look, then gave her a calculating look. “We could leave that there,” he said, “and take a little intermission--”

“Fantastic idea,” Yennefer said, unbuckling the harness. She paused to kiss Geralt, because he was so sweet, eyes blissfully half-shut and mouth moving only belatedly under her attentions.

She wound up sitting astride Jaskier’s hips with him flat on his back next to Geralt. Jaskier was using one hand to gently move her dildo inside Geralt, who was deliciously twitchy about it-- and she could feel it, could feel herself deep in him, and at the same time she could feel Jaskier’s cock in her to the hilt as she rode him, and it was a whole lot to feel at once and she had her hands splayed out across Jaskier’s chest as if to hold on.

“Fuck,” she said, “fuck,” and she was most of the way lost to it, and Geralt was trembling and gasping next to her and she reached over and took his hand and he held onto her and she came, and came, and completely lost track of herself in the process.

“Wait,” Jaskier gasped thinly, trying to stop or something, maybe trying to push her off, “fuck, too much, I need-- ah-- ah _fuck_ \--” and he was coming too and she sat down to take his cock as deep as it would go, shaking hard as he came in her.

Only then did they shudder to a halt, and he gently dumped her off of himself and directly into Geralt’s arms with a breathless kiss, and Geralt kissed her neck and held her breasts and she took a moment to breathe.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Jaskier said, breathing hard, “I was only going to-- for a minute--”

“It’s fine,” Geralt said, and caught him by the jaw, pulling him in. “I think we need a break.”

Yennefer was going to say something clever, but she couldn’t really manage anything more coherent than a moan, sandwiched as she was between the two men and with Geralt still clenched hot and shaky around her cock. (She should find out at what distance it could still function, that would be a useful bit of information.)

“Fuck,” she managed, finally, “Geralt, your ass is a fucking miracle.”

He clenched down tighter and she shivered. “You can still feel that?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, letting her head fall back against his shoulder. “Fuck.”

“Oh damn,” Jaskier said. “I guess that explains some things.”

“It’s so much,” Yennefer moaned. “Fuck!”

“You smell fantastic,” Geralt said, and it came out growly, more like his usual. He set his teeth gently against her neck and she moaned again, shivering. “You _both_ smell fantastic.”

Jaskier rolled up and sat on his feet, leaning his hands on his thighs, looking a bit winded. “I bet we do,” he said. “I need a drink.”

“Mm,” Geralt said, “water or other?”

“Both,” Jaskier said.

They took a little intermission. Jaskier was annoyed with himself for finishing too soon. Neither of the others were exactly human, and as ageless beings they’d surely be up to go all night, but he was not twenty anymore and he wasn’t going to be ready to go again anytime soon.

Fortunately, this wasn’t the Countess; there were plenty of things for him to do that didn’t depend directly or specifically on his virility. He worked Yennefer’s cock gently back out of Geralt’s beautiful asshole so Geralt could roll up to his knees and pick Yennefer up in his arms, carry her over to the bed, and dump her on it.

She was behaving rather more like a normal woman than an ageless and powerful mage; she was fairly well fucked-out and not in much of a condition to do more than moan and look deliciously debauched, but a glass of wine and some pillows and she propped herself attractively up against the headboard, flushed and glorious and slightly tousled, and came to herself enough to give them both some very promising looks. Oh, she’d be ready to go again in a moment.

As for Geralt, he wandered around the room finding them things to drink and getting them both water and tidying slightly, but he was already way more than half-hard again and showing no signs of flagging.

Jaskier sighed to himself, drank a full cup of water and half a cup of wine, and lay down next to Yennefer in the bed with one of the books he’d snagged from the shelf. “Now,” he said, “where were we?

“Oh,” Yennefer said, “this one looks promising. _Tales Of The Wild Forest_. It’s short stories.”

“Oh no,” Geralt said, “not that one,” and he sat on the foot of the bed. “That one’s complete trash.”

“How come you have all these books if they’re all mysteriously not yours?” Jaskier asked, tilting his head.

“ _The Ruin Of The Miller’s Daughter_ ,” Yennefer intoned delightedly, and flipped a couple of pages, letting the book settle open. “Hmm.” She drew her finger down the page, reading quickly. Jaskier was a fast reader, but Yennefer was faster still, and while he’d no need of reading glasses he couldn’t read in the dim the way he used to.

“A lot of them are salvage,” Geralt said, and his voice was quieter. “I-- there wasn’t much left of the library, after-- after. I collected what I could and that’s. Mostly that’s in a room downstairs. But people’s personal books, I didn’t think fit in there so well, and so they’re here.”

Jaskier suddenly remembered Geralt mentioning the word _pogrom_ and said, much less amused, “Oh.”

Yennefer wasn’t paying attention to them. “It’s a bunch of giant monsters and some blushing maiden,” she said. “Oh my goodness.”

Jaskier blinked at her, and leaned over. She tapped a specific paragraph and he started reading. “Oh,” he said, “ _oh_ my, that’s-- oh!”

“This might be too filthy for me to read aloud,” Yennefer said.

“She’d be _dead_ ,” Jaskier said, horrified. “That’s not sexy, that’s horrible!”

“I mean, it’s clearly intended to be sexy,” Yennefer said. “Look, there’s an illustration, that’s clearly intended to titillate.”

“You can’t-- oh sweet Goddess,” Jaskier said. “If it’s so-- you can’t-- just, the relative scale of the participants here, you can’t expect to have her _survive_ the process, let alone get some sort of _pleasure_ \--”

“How is she _coming_ from that, that’s not how it _works_ ,” Yennefer said, equally horrified. She flipped the page. “This goes on for _ages_. What, _all_ of them?”

“There’s not even a smidgeon of realism in the entire book,” Geralt said.

Yennefer looked up at him sharply. “No?” she said, and her smile was dangerous.

“They’re not even close to real monsters,” Geralt said. “There’s no such things as _rock ogres_ , it’s entirely made-up, and if there were such things they certainly wouldn’t be interested in deflowering maidens, and even if they were--”

“So you’re an expert in getting fucked by groups of outsize monsters,” Yennefer said.

Geralt finally saw the trap, and stopped. “I,” he said, and blushed. “No!”

“Yes!” she said. “Oh, Geralt! Tell us. Please tell us about the time a group of giant monsters gangbanged you.”

“No,” Geralt said, “that’s not--”

“Yes,” she said. “You can’t tell me you’ve never fucked a monster. You’ve fucked _me_.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said, “I wouldn’t call you a _monster_ ,” and she laughed and elbowed him.

“I’ve never,” Geralt said, and Yennefer reached out and took him by the hand, pulling him down onto the bed.

“You absolutely have,” she said, and set her wine cup down on the bedside stand and set to kissing him. That was it, that was the intermission, the ageless immortals were going to get back to fucking, and Jaskier was just going to fall asleep in the bed next to them. It was all right, he hadn’t really expected he’d be able to keep up-- well, all right, that wasn’t true, he’d kept up with all kinds of people on all kinds of wild adventures. And, honestly, he wasn’t anywhere near falling asleep.

And, okay, Geralt was kissing his way across Yennefer’s breasts, which were really stupendous as breasts went and maybe magic had made them like that but clearly whoever had made the magic had gotten the idea from someplace and Jaskier was somehow willing to bet that, whatever Yennefer had looked like before, she’d probably had fantastic tits already. She just seemed like the type. He’d have to remember to tell her that, she’d probably be amused.

“Hmmm,” Jaskier said, because his spirit was willing but his flesh was yet weak. “I think you’ve spent long enough letting us have our wicked way with you, Geralt. It’s time you pulled your weight around here.”

Geralt laughed, and moved a bit farther down the bed, holding Yennefer by the hips and pushing his face down between her thighs. She gave a startled little shriek, then moaned as he set to work. “There you go,” Jaskier said, sitting up to pat Geralt’s hair.

Yennefer drew breath to say something, possibly something sarcastic, but Geralt cut her off with a redoubling of his efforts, and she exclaimed wordlessly instead. It was only a matter of moments until she was shuddering and crying out, bucking rhythmically up under him; she was so far gone, and Jaskier took advantage to kiss her mouth and avail himself of all of that pleasure-drunk Yennefer sweetness.

She moaned, and tilted her head back, and said, “Geralt,” tugging on his hair. She wasn’t terribly self-possessed, and it clearly took almost all of her coherence to get out the phrase, “Fuck me,” and Geralt laughed and sat up.

Jaskier took advantage of that, too, to kiss him. “Mm,” Geralt said, and kissed him deeper, several times. “She tastes of you,” he pointed out.

“Ought to,” Jaskier said smugly.

“Fuck me,” Yennefer demanded.

“Insatiable,” Jaskier murmured, stroking her hair.

“If that’s what you want,” Geralt said. He sat back against the headboard, and gestured at his magnificent erection. “Here, I cleared you a space to sit.”

“Nn,” she said, and rolled onto her back. “Legs’re tired.”

“Her majesty wishes for a full-service servicing,” Jaskier laughed.

“Fair enough,” Geralt said, and knelt up, manhandling her into position in front of him. He made a great little noise, thin and heartfelt, as he sank into her, but for her part, she made a truly fantastic, deeply guttural sound of satisfaction as he filled her up, and _that_ went straight to the part of Jaskier’s brain where those sorts of things belonged, and lit him up from inside. Oh, yes.

“Fuck,” she said hoarsely, and Geralt said, “yes ma’am,” and obliged.

Watching Geralt fuck Yennefer was plenty to let Jaskier’s body catch up; she was already incoherent with it, spread out under him and moaning, and Geralt, despite his briefly-convincing facsimile of composure, wasn’t much better.

Jaskier had seen them fuck before, but hadn’t really been able to appreciate it. This was a much better view. It was difficult, by this point in the evening, to tell whether Yennefer was coming or not at any given juncture, but he consoled himself she probably wasn’t really sure either; she was marvellously easy to pleasure once she got going, and she was going so thoroughly that she possibly might not stop for a while.

He retrieved his wineglass and settled in where he knew he was within Geralt’s view, and said, “Nice technique, but if you focused you could get more depth on the thrusts there with just a bit more effort.”

“Fuck off,” Geralt said fondly.

“C’mon,” Jaskier said, “I know you’re tired, Yen, but arch up a bit, you could-- oh, that was a good one, I could tell-- I love how your eyes roll back, that really sells it.”

“Fuck,” Yen said, eyes glazed and distant, “ah fuck-- Geralt-- _fuck_ \--”

“Very heartfelt,” Jaskier said. He picked up a notebook that was lying on the trunk, and pulled out a pencil stub fastened to the spine with a loop, flipped to a blank page and pretended to be taking notes. “I give that one a nine out of ten. Now, Geralt, you’re on your third climax of the night, yes? Yennefer, is it worth attempting to count?”

Geralt looked over at him in amusement, rubbing his chin along Yennefer’s hair. He wasn’t quite at the point of no return but he was close, hitching into her with a glazed kind of focus, and Yennefer was completely beyond even knowing Jaskier was there, staring blindly at the ceiling utterly lost in pleasure.

“If you’re trying to get me to fuck you instead you’ve got to wait,” Geralt said, “I’m not done here.”

“No no,” Jaskier said, “I’m invested in this outcome. I think she wrung me dry in about a minute and a half but you’re on track to make it significantly longer already.”

“Ha,” Gerat said, then, “fuck,” and Yennefer’s limbs all twitched, scrabbling uncoordinatedly at the bedsheets as she gave a sharper little cry. “Ah fuck,” Geralt said, movements going ragged.

“That’s done it,” Jaskier said, “and our hero is crossing the finish line in three… two… one…”

Geralt’s back rounded over Yennefer as his hips stuttered into her, breath hitching as he shuddered to a finish.

“Oh,” Jaskier said, “very nice, very nice, could do better on the vocalizations though. Grunting is uninspired, love. I know it’s your thing but just consider for a moment that you could do something _more_ with it.”

Geralt gave a long exhale, letting his head rest on Yennefer’s shoulder, and then kissed her neck. She groaned, and wrapped her arms around his ribs.

Jaskier finished his wine and set the glass aside. He looked at the book he was holding, flipping through the pages now that he wasn’t pretending to write in it. It was handwritten, and in Geralt’s handwriting, but he couldn’t read it-- it was all abbreviations, shorthands, maybe even a cipher. There was a drawing-- it was a botanical sketch of some kind of flower. He turned it sideways to see it better.

Suddenly Geralt grabbed him and hauled him over next to Yennefer. “Leave that book alone,” he said, shoving it off the bed back onto the trunk and manhandling Jaskier down into the bed.

“Hnn,” Jaskier said, any ability to resist completely sidestepped by his hindbrain pointing out how hot it was when Geralt moved him as if he weighed nothing.

Yennefer gave him a sleepy-eyed soft grin and grabbed him to kiss him. Geralt pinned him down so she could take whatever she wanted of him, and set about kissing his neck.

After a pleasant interlude of mouths and tongues and skin and fingers, Geralt wound up flat on his back in bed with his knees up and Yennefer sitting on his face, looking delightedly at Jaskier as he used the bottle of nice stuff Yennefer had brought rather than the dregs of whatever jar next to Geralt’s bed to slick up his cock-- wonder of wonders, it was decidedly up for this after all-- and push into Geralt.

This was fun, because while he could feel Geralt’s reaction, he couldn’t see his face, but he could see Yennefer reacting to Geralt’s reaction, and it was both sexy and incredibly entertaining.

Fucking Geralt was both exactly and nothing like Jaskier had fantasized about, all these years. He had let himself have some pretty wild daydreams, over the years, and some of them had blended with memory to the point that he occasionally had to remind himself that his relationship with Geralt hadn’t really been like this all along.

(He did have a particularly vivid memory of sleeping so peacefully on Geralt’s chest in that makeshift field hospital during the plague back in ‘45 or so, which he’d never been able to figure out if he’d hallucinated or not.)

Yennefer pushed up a little to look under herself at Geralt’s face, checking in on him briefly. “Is that good, sweetheart?” she asked.

“Fuck,” Geralt groaned, undulating his body a bit, “it’s good.”

“Can you breathe?” she asked.

“Don’t need to,” he said.

“It’s true,” Jaskier put in, somewhat to distract himself from how hot and tight and perfect Geralt’s body felt. “He can hold his breath for approximately ever.”

“I don’t want that, though,” Yennefer said. “I want him to be all right.”

“You taste incredible,” Geralt said.

She laughed. “I taste like both of you,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss Jaskier, holding him by the neck to steady herself. She was shaky with the effort, and after a moment released him to sit back down on Geralt’s face. Geralt grabbed her by the hips and settled her more firmly, and Jaskier could feel him working himself up about how much he liked fucking her with his tongue.

And, yes, part of what was so appealing was that she surely tasted like both of them, and that was attractive to Jaskier too but he wasn’t letting himself think about that too much. He couldn’t really think of anything too much. He’d already come too fast once tonight, he wasn’t going to do it again, and he’d expected not to have so much trouble this time but _fuck_ , Geralt was hot and tight and plenty slick and kept clenching down around him, and his magnificent thighs were around Jaskier’s waist, and Yennefer was unbelievably gorgeous like this, nearly incoherent and shivery and naked and smelling of both of them strongly enough that even Jaskier could appreciate it.

“Ah,” she said, “Jaskier, fuck,” and she was shuddering through what had to be yet another climax, and he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the movement of her breasts, “oh fuck, fuck him, fuck him so _good_ , Jaskier, I want him to _feel it_ later, I want him finished-- _fuck_ ,” and she shook, gasping.

Geralt made a wonderfully affecting muffled little noise, grabbing her hips and lifting her bodily. He did take a breath, Jaskier felt him do it, which was reassuring; it was eerie when he held his breath for so long.

“I’ll fuck him like he deserves, darling,” Jaskier said, and did, which passed the next little while quite pleasantly and with increasing intensity. He was doing rather well, all told, and surely he couldn’t be blamed if he couldn’t last much longer after all? Yennefer shook all over and leaned forward and caught his mouth with hers, and he kissed her for a few moments.

It was odd to be fucking one person and kissing a different one, but Jaskier had made his way through a dazzling array of beds full of bodies, in his day; he’d always managed to acquit himself decently, but it struck him in this moment that he’d never quite been this sincerely happy about all of it before. Mm, there was something to think about later, to be sure.

Yennefer shivered and tipped herself off of Geralt, finally, flopping down in the bed next to them, with an air of satiety. Geralt came up gasping for air, but settled down quickly; that hadn’t really been long for him to hold his breath, at all.

“You’re such a mess,” Yennefer said fondly, kissing the side of his face; surely his beard was all full of unspeakable fluids, at this point, but he didn’t look like he cared.

“Fuck,” Geralt said, “Jaskier--”

“You look so good like this,” Jaskier said. He knew, he knew better-- don’t bring up Geralt’s appearance, it always backfired-- but it was too late, he’d said what he’d said, and it was true-- Geralt was a glorious spectacle of lithe muscled limbs and taut torso and glazed eyes, open mouth, hard cock, head tipped up and throat bared. Jaskier leaned down a little, so he could touch Geralt’s chest, his arm, his shoulder, his neck. “So good for me. Fuck.”

Yennefer collected herself enough to sit up and put her hand on Geralt’s erection, which made him twitch his whole body, and Jaskier groaned. That was it, that was the beginning of the end.

“Come on,” Yennefer said, husky and sweet. “Both of you.”

“Ha,” Geralt said tightly, “getting you nonverbal didn’t last long,” and he shivered, and Jaskier had to bite his lip and focus on keeping his pace steady.

“It never does,” she said, “that’s not how I work, but you did a fantastic job there, darlings. Now come on,” and she gave her hand a clever twist over the end of Geralt’s cock, and he shuddered, wide-eyed and glassy, and Jaskier picked up the pace a bit-- it was a race now, and if he finished too fast they’d just have to think of something, between the three of them; it would probably work out all right.

“Ah fuck,” Jaskier said, as his spine started to go tingly; he was done for. He groaned as his coordination bled away; doing his best to keep his movements coherent was like swimming through treacle, and he lost sensation in his limbs briefly and then came so hard he couldn’t see for a solid minute.

He came to himself in a moment, head pressed into Geralt’s shoulder and body curved over his, as Geralt groaned and shuddered and came in Yennefer’s hand, making desperate noises almost like it hurt.

Jaskier collected his limbs, which were all present but seemed strangely distant, and collected himself, which was mostly on Geralt, partly in, and managed to assemble himself into an approximation of a human again. Yen kissed him, sweet and intense, and helped him settle himself down onto the bed, and arranged Geralt’s heavy limbs so he lay neatly between them, and pulled the blankets up.

“Hm,” Geralt said, drifting pleasantly.

Jaskier kissed his cheek. “Will that do?” he asked.

“Mm,” Geralt said, trailing his fingers down Jaskier’s back.

“I rather think so,” Yennefer said. She put out several of the lights with a gesture, and lay back. “That went well.” She reached over and retrieved the fallen dildo, and harness, from the trunk, and gestured at them with a bit of magic.

“Can you still feel with it?” Jaskier asked, amused.

“I just deactivated it,” she said, “I don’t really need to feel it getting cold overnight.” She gave him a look. “Are you not going to fall instantly asleep like every man ever after sex is done?”

“I’ll get there,” Jaskier said pleasantly. “I like to cuddle first.”

She laughed. “I’m normally not that big a fan but I could use to be held a bit.”

Geralt, proving he was not asleep, wrapped his arm around her waist and hauled her back into the bed. She squeaked, and laughed, and settled against his chest, across from Jaskier.

“Well,” she said, “all right then.”

* * *

I'm going to just put some acknowledgements right in the body of the chapter text since I used the endnotes for warnings, lol.

Thanks for reading! It's not that I'm done with the series-- I have an epilogue to this story to post as soon as I figure out how I'm doing that, precisely, and there might be one more biggish story still to come if I've got the time, which, y'know, maybe-- but this seems like a good place to say thank you. I glanced at my stats on AO3 and various of the stories in this series have surpassed shit I've had up since 2013 for kudos, comments, all but hits-- and the kudos-to-hits ratio is like, way way higher on this stuff than any of my old stuff, which clearly says a lot about the Witcher fandom. So, thanks for that, thanks even to the lurkers, thank you for reading and reccing and being here with me even if I don't know about you except from my stats. But especially, of course, thanks _enormously_ to all of you commenters, I fell off the wagon of faithfully replying not because you were so numerous and I am so swamped and famous and such (ha), but because I just can't manage a lot of communication most of the time, and it's been an intense couple of months in a lot of ways. (Don't be alarmed if you get another spate of replies months after the initial comment, I've been doing that sometimes too.)

Thanks for spending these scary months with me; I haven't been alone, and it's made a lot of difference. Who knows where all this is going, but we're going there together.

And thanks to the people who've commented on Tumblr and Dreamwidth, who've reblogged, who've replied with ideas and such, who've been down to send asks or chat or whatever. My Geralt's Formative Porn series was really useful in workshopping some of the ideas I used for this chapter (and the one before), and I can't thank y'all enough. (The Geralt's Formative Porn masterpost, if you missed it and would like to know more, is here on [Tumblr](https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/623624165714477056/geralts-formative-porn-masterpost) and [on Dreamwidth](https://dragonlady7.dreamwidth.org/3480736.html) in case Tumblr eats it).

Anyway-- I may do some tidying, some reordering of the series here-- maybe I should do a series-within-a-series, because obviously there's a 1263/4 storyline that starts with MDS and ends (so far) here, and then a separate 1240s-onward storyline with the earlier Jaskier/Geralt relationship, and then I want to do a few more deleted scenes and slotting those where they go timeline-wise is challenging, so-- who knows. I may or may not fix it all, don't be alarmed.

And sometimes it makes you look back on your time in a community-- I've been on AO3 since 2013 and in fandom since about 9 years before that, and I just think I've grown a lot as a writer and the main reason is that there are readers, y'know? Makes a lot of difference, in a way that college classes in writing don't. I just feel like this is the most coherent effort I've managed, so, thanks for taking this ride I guess.

I quite badly want to write an original novel at some point in here. That's what I'll do when I'm done with the stories in this series, so-- if you're interested in that, stay tuned. (I have a couple of them in progress, one with a solarpunk kind of setting and some mammoths, and another one with a boy who has a god that lives in him, so we'll see. If I get to them, my Tumblr/DW will be the place to find out, so keep in touch if you're interested.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs: they find Geralt's porn and some of it is fairly Problematic, but they are skim-reading. References to gangbangs and specifically the Fantasy Porno (TM) kind of noncon where the victim is Super Into It. (This is clearly pornography and no details are provided.) Also a mention of, sort of, tentacle porn/ graphic monsterfucking, but Yennefer is too grossed-out to read it aloud so there are no details. My loves, I am not actually intending any judgment of any porn you may enjoy OR may find loathsome; all reactions are by the characters, and I've tried to strike a good balance between humor and being gross. Please let me know if I should adjust or tag anything differently.


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